VivaKi & VivaKi Nerve Center

VivaKi and AOL “Tech-tails” at CES 2012. AOL Blog 

Forget Cannes: CES is the Place to Be and Be Seen. Ad Age

CES 2012: The world of TV is an exciting one! Newsline

Three Arrivals at VivaKi. AdMedia

VivaKi strikes exclusive deal for Xbox entertainment apps. MediaWeek UK

VivaKi Nerve Center hires Smith as head of activation. Brand Republic

Agencies, Publishers Evaluating Tablet Models. Beet.TV

Online Video Format ASq Logs More than 400 Million Impressions, 85% Completion Rates. Beet.TV

Curt Hecht, Tobin Ireland and Joe Kennedy Elected to the Mobile Marketing Association. PR Newswire

Digitas & Digitas Health

This week social media marketers around the world are taking part in Social Media Week 2012. And VivaKi’s social media leaders are no exception. Those in NY have a multitude of options from VivaKi agencies Digitas and Big Fuel.

Acting as a Global Hub, Big Fuel is hosting a series of speakers at the Nokia stage, numerous interactive installations, a blogger/press lounge and a number of unique social events throughout the week. They are also hosting daily panels on a series of key areas for social media marketers. The full schedule of events is available here.

Meanwhile, Digitas is also hosting a number of events at their NY office as well as live tweeting and live blogging. Don’t miss any of their events (or impressive line of panelists.) Get the full line up here.

Meanwhile in San Francisco, Razorfish is hosting the Social Media Analytics & Technology Hub. This all-day event will explore current and emerging trends in data-driven social media programs. Panelists for the day include Rod Smith, VP Emerging Technologies and Fellow at IBM and Jason Tester, Research Director at The Institute for the Future. Check out all their events here.

Registration to Social Media Week events is free while space lasts.

This is the final part of our five part series of the major trends VivaKi leaders see for 2012. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4. For the remaining trends, please continue to visit VivaKi.com or stay up to date via Facebook or Twitter.

Cisco estimates that there will be 15 billion connected devices by 2015… and each device creating mountains of data that we are now able to collect. All this information is leading many, including our Moxie Interactive, to call this the “year of big data” in which marketers will use huge nationwide customer data to drive the quality of service and information down to the local level. These are lofty goals that hinge on the important ability to not only amass this data, but to be able to extract meaningful and actionable insights from it.

Chief Social Media Officer Michael Wiley believes that three key shifts need to occur in order to deal with the data influx:

“First, we need to hire “quants” — mathematicians and statisticians who can analyze both structured and unstructured data. Secondly, we need to continue to seek partnerships with the leading and emerging data analytics systems and services providers. Finally, we need to begin to learn from and leverage proven data-mining and analytic techniques from financial services and life sciences disciplines.”

Data management technology (DMP) is a first step in harnessing data to uncover insights and will be a powerful tool for agencies and brands looking to get smarter about how they target consumers. DMP will “transform much of the way brands look at their current audience models,” according to Mac Delaney, VP of Brand Relations for the Nerve Center’s Audience on Demand. “Though still in its early stages, DMP yields more value in audience identification and discovery for marketers than the opening of exchanges and the DSP evolution.”

At the same time, Marco Bertozzi, Managing Director of VivaKi Nerve Center EMEA, predicts that this data will also allow for “the silos of search, exchange trading and buying on APIs will be broken down as we start to use Data Management, targeting, and buying across all three of them to drive campaign results. We will all get smarter about talking data as a planning mechanism rather than a list of sites.”

As the economy continues to struggle, clients will be looking even harder at data to ensure that they’re spending their money wisely. The industry will have to develop better tools and models to provide those assurances. “We will all get smarter about talking data as a planning mechanism, rather than a list of sites to represent targeting,” says  Bertozzi. Though a large challenge, VCC Kevin Malloy also sees this as our biggest opportunity.

This is part four of a five part series of the major trends VivaKi leaders see for 2012. Read Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3. For the remaining trends, please continue to visit VivaKi.com or stay up to date via Facebook or Twitter.

Every year – for seemingly the past five years – has been dubbed the “Year of Mobile.” But what we’re seeing now is not the importance of the smartphone alone. Instead mobility is making our physical location and real (i.e. analog) places more important because, as Chief Strategy Officer Rishad Tobaccowala, points out “we now can go where we want and bring our technology assistants with us.”

The rise of the always-on, always-available Internet is making location planning and knowledge even more important. As consumers customize their content to fit their needs, they’ll expect it to be relevant to where they are and what they’re doing at any given time, not just who they are. “GPS technology will create the highest level of the ability to fit communication with consumers’ receptivity. The industry business model around mobile technology is still complex and lacks a user-centered focus,” says Guillermo Tafet, VivaKi Country Chair (South America).

Therefore, it will be increasingly important for us to know where our consumers are not just in their lives or purchase funnel, but physically. A message targeted to a consumer who is out and about in the world will (and should) be different than one targeted a consumer on his or her couch. “The context of the offline world is crucial for marketers so they know what kind of message to deliver and how to interact with a customer at any given time,” says Avi Savar, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Fuel.

Tobaccowala also believes this new focus on place will drive an increasing importance of the in-store transaction. People are analog and as such we interact with our world physically first. Therefore, we are still receptive to well thought-out and helpful in-store experiences. At the same time our digital devices give us access to more information than ever before as we shop. Amazon’s push to get the in-store shopper to comparison shop on its site is just one example. As the use of location-based services and smartphones increases around the world, catering digital experiences to analog environments will become increasingly important.

This is part three of a five part series of the major trends VivaKi leaders see for 2012. Read Part 1 or Part 2. For the remaining trends, please continue to visit VivaKi.com or stay up to date via Facebook or Twitter.

The frenetic pace of change and continued growth of multi-screen, multi-tasking entertainment options has kept our industry on its toes. To better anticipate and respond to these changes, significant shifts in the way we work and think will need to be made. And inspiration will come from everywhere. VivaKi’s Chief Innovation Officer Rishad Tobaccowala thinks that marketing’s future will be determined outside of the confines of the marketing industry: “…Adobe, IBM and many others from the tech industry will bring forth one powerful front, while names we have never heard of – from both global markets and garages – will continue to press us to stop thinking narrowly and become more open in both mindset and partnering.” VivaKi CEO Jack Klues agrees: “This year will be defined by new mash-ups and once-former competitors will learn from the benefit of cozy bedfellows.” He also thinks that proprietary technology will be outed as subpar once advertising organizations stop trying to compete with the technology companies and start to embrace an open source mentality.

Tobaccowala continues that in 2012 we’ll begin to see significant restructuring and dissolution of marketing hierarchies and leaders: “It will be messy, bloody and chaotic but the future does not fit in the mindsets or containers of the past, and what will need to be done will be done.”

Likewise, new systems, processes, tools and workflow models are needed to help streamline efficiencies and bring a focus back to innovation and client services. Kuba Benke, VivaKi Country Chair (Poland) thinks we can greatly improve our organization’s ability to effectively work on a project basis if we utilize a matrix structure that allows for various functions and specialty divisions vs. client teams who manage all responsibilities. Meanwhile, Chief Social Media Officer Michael Wiley points to the proliferation of low-to-no-cost cloud-based services being a way to help us streamline efficiencies in-house: “We need to develop an ecosystem that adopts the best practices of the social Web and mirrors the capabilities internally.”

Another opportunity lies in the approach to global audience buying in the addressable marketplaces. The Nerve Center’s VP of Brand Relations for Audience on Demand, Mac Delaney thinks we are still working in a “piecemeal, tactical-usage world.” He continues: “We need agency leadership and marketers to define their overall addressability strategy – from their solutions, we provide flow in with ease.”

Marco Bertozzi, Managing Director of VivaKi Nerve Center EMEA, also feels that there is an opportunity to assemble our existing agency properties into a more well-rounded, global group to help clients respond to important industry challenges. “[A more global approach] would give clients the maximum amount of insights and services with the minimum amount of disruption.”

This day in age also calls for talent that was born digital. Digital natives are entering the work force in droves, which is means that we will start to see a more aggressive bump in the hiring of what Wiley refers to as “mini moguls… individuals who are part tech geek and past artist.” He continues, “[w]hile the media being created will always require content, the mechanisms of change are being conceived and created by those who have grown up in a digital world in which left-brain capability is an enabler for right-brain vision.” And because of the rise of digital devices and metrics associated with the various platforms, it’s also essential for talent to possess distinct analytical skills and a keen ability to interpret the multitude of data. Beatriz Fernández de Bordóns, Managing Director of VivaKi Nerve Center Iberia, believes we should “transform our planning and buying experts into campaign optimizers and analytic professionals; we have to transform the skills of our teams from an advertising focus to scientific profiles.

Finally, where would we be without ideas? Razorfish Chief Creative Officer Daniel Bonner believes it’s the little ideas that really transform and define our industry – things like the “Like” button on Facebook or the hashtag on Twitter – that have completely changed the way we interact and communicate with brands and people: “’Critical non-essentials’ is a phrase used in business and sport that describes the small advantages in many areas that when added together give any organization or team the edge over their competition. I predict a transition to this philosophy for brands and their agencies as a collection of small but ambitious, innovative and convention challenging ideas will define the ambition they set out to claim as their own.”

This is part two of a five part series of the major trends VivaKi leaders see for 2012. Read Part 1. For the remaining trends, please continue to visit VivaKi.com or stay up to date via Facebook or Twitter.

Whether it’s through interactive offerings like Peel – which provides a recommendation engine for television shows based on what you already watch and like – or through the multitude of connected devices, including televisions, consumers will have more opportunities to customize their entertainment options like never before. The on-demand nature of being able to find any piece of entertainment at any given time, anywhere, has upended the traditional media model…and the advertising that goes with it. “More advertisers will be looking to agencies to deliver more targeted advertising on the TV through connected TVs and set-top boxes. Video advertising shown on streamed content on TVs will also increase significantly in 2012,” says Marco Bertozzi, Managing Director of VivaKi Nerve Center, EMEA. VivaKi’s EVP, Director of Innovations Tracey Scheppach also believes that 2012 will be a huge year for addressable advertising, as more and more TVs become connected to the internet and all media becomes IP-enabled. According to a report by DisplaySearch, almost 50 percent of televisions will be connected to the internet by 2015.

Moving forward, we’ll see more clients demanding that they reach consumers with the content that’s relevant to them, and only them. This will give greater influence to platforms that can deliver relevant messaging to relevant consumers like Audience on Demand and ASq. “Customization of everything at anywhere means not only the consumer’s power to select, define, create and customize content, but also the demand to receive only relevant communication and content related to personal interest,” says Guillermo Taffet, VivaKi Country Chair (South America).

With more consumers creating their own entertainment ecosystems on their own time and with their own customization, content will be the most important element in making sure consumers are paying attention. “[Content] will become more and more social, not only more sharable, but connected in real-time through several screens and devices, providing brand new opportunities for brand communications. What is called ‘transmedia’  – the technique of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats, using current digital technologies – could really see the light of day.” says Daniel Saada, VivaKi Country Chair (France).

And it will all come back to story. The most basic element of marketing will remain the most important: telling a relevant and engaging story that consumers can relate to. “Stories will continue to be critical. And there will be new ways to not just tell stories, but have others participate in the stories,” says Rishad Tobaccowala. “The science of marketing, particularly finding the right audience in the right mindset and the right context to engage in a story, brand building will be even more important.”

This is part one of a five part series of the major trends VivaKi leaders see for 2012. For other trends, please continue to visit VivaKi.com or stay up to date via Facebook or Twitter.

As social media has increasingly dominated consumers online experience these social sites have also increasingly become the place where consumers turn to for brand information, recommendations and purchases. We all know that ‘recommendations from friends’ is consistently cited as the most important force in choosing one brand over another. Today these recommendations increasing live online. This maturing relationship requires a new understanding of influence and a new technique for reaching the influential.

Though social media is making the process of tapping into these relationships easier and faster “the days of getting influencers to tout products for nothing or for a nominal gift card are numbered… Influence is a now a measurable function of relationships and is being monetized.” So says Michael Wiley, VivaKi’s Chief Social Media Officer. He cites Klout as one example. The site is quickly becoming the standard for measuring influence. At the same time in the media space, the power of Facebook to target ads based on people’s likes (and dislikes) is giving rise to stronger, more relevant messaging. As Facebook moves forward this year, Drew Heuning, Social Operations Manager for VivaKi Nerve Center, envisions increased adoption of Facebook “verbs,” which will break the industry focus away from a fixation on fans while also allowing individuals to more accurately express their relationship with a product or item.

But the true value of Facebook to tap into influence is in the way it leverages our friends. “Facebook has invented the second-strongest Internet performance driver after search: your friends’ recommendations,” says Daniel Saada, VivaKi Country Chair (France). The use of friends’ recommendations for products and services is growing (who hasn’t asked for a referral through Facebook for something), and the idea is being adopted by platforms such as Yelp, which will put your known users’ reviews above those from anonymous posters to give you more relevance, as well as new player Pinterest that allows users to look only at what their friends are sharing.

As Facebook becomes an even more powerful arena for building brands, recommendations and sales, and content sharing platforms like Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr expand their reach, watch for Google to invest heavily over the coming year in Google + and personalized search. What does all of this mean?

Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy Officer, believes we need to think of marketing from a new angle: “marketing will increasingly resemble political campaigns with Brands mobilizing and incentivizing their advocates to market to their friends and communities.”

Over the next two weeks, we will be looking at these 5 themes that were consistently raised by our leaders:

- The New Definition of Influence
– Customized Content and Storytelling
– New Ways of Working
– Melding of Mobility & Location
– From Data to Insights

Check back here for more information on each trend or look out for our announcements on Facebook and Twitter about each new post.

UPDATED Feb 9, 2012 with links to all posts.

Last week, VivaKi hit Vegas in full force to attend the 45th annual Consumer Electronics Show. With over 400 agency and client attendees, VivaKi hosted a unique three-day agenda that gave guests access to VIP tours of the show floor, exclusive sneak-peeks and insights into this year’s hottest trends and exclusive opportunities to network with some of the industry’s leading companies and start-ups. A huge thanks to our sponsors who made this experience truly worthwhile for all attendees, including: AOL, Buddy Media, CNET, Facebook, MediaLink, Pandora, Popular Science, Rovi, Scripps Network Interactive, ShareThis, Sharethrough, Sony, Syfy/PSFK, Turner, Videology, VivaKi Ventures, Wired, YuMe.

Many of our thought leaders from around the globe were in attendance at CES this year and participated in the VivaKi Bright Lights, Big Ideas agenda. Below are a collection of some of our favorite recaps from them about the show.

——————————————-

VivaKi Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer Rishad Tobaccowala put together one of the more unique overviews of CES we’ve seen. Instead of an outline of top products, he focused on the feelings and thoughts he took away:

After three days of participating in all the activities noted above and listening to wonderful experts my summary is things are getting larger, thinner, faster, clearer, cheaper and more connected, while everybody is lusting after or leaking into everybody else’s business.

For Rishad, these marketplace changes mean a new focus on optimism, a need for femininity and fashion, that connectivity is a two-edged sword and mongrel living will create huge new business opportunities. See what he thinks this all means at Re-imagining by @rishadt.

Are we in a “filling in” period for technology? That’s the impression Moxie Interactive’s Greg Satell, SVP Strategy & Innovation, got from the show floor. But don’t let that make you think what’s happening today isn’t significant:

Processing and storage capacity aren’t really an issue at the moment, 4G has been launched and we won’t have another bandwidth standard for a decade. HTML 5 won’t be completed for a few years and so on.

Moreover, we can expect a fairly orderly progression until the computing environment shifts drastically around 2020. We have a good idea what standards we have to work with and what we can expect from them.

However, what’s going on now is, in a certain sense, more important. The technology we do have is getting much, much more useful. It’s becoming integrated, intuitive and more reliable. We’re not so much chasing the next big thing, but fulfilling old promises to the average consumer.

Greg outlines examples of this technology in his full write up at Digital Tonto.

Meanwhile, the renewed focus on practical technology at this year’s show was particularly refreshing for Denuo’s Senior Alchemist John Durbin:

This year was a different story. I was amazed at the amount of practical technology that was being presented. Sure, there were still massive 3D displays (LG) but it felt more like a showroom floor where the theme is “we’ll make life better” as opposed to “isn’t this neat?”

Read about specific examples of both the cool and practical at his full post on Denuology.

VivaKi Nerve Center’s Marco Bertozzi, Managing Director EMEA was struck by the prominence of converged television technology.

The TV is no longer lean back but lean in, it is being designed to draw you in and pull you from your stupor. The TV is being assaulted by set top boxes, App stores, satellite companies, it’s now no longer able to sit quietly in the corner of the room, it has to be your communicator through Skype, your music system, social media entry point, picture frame, cinema etc, it is also on a diet and becoming more colourful! (more on that later). Before looking at specifics, I have to say that above all the point I was left with was that the role of the main broadcasters and channels seems antiquated and slow at this stage and being left behind a very fast moving wave of tech.

Read more about his take on the rise of apps, the importance of personalization, the battle of software and the changes in how we will measure viewership in his post at Bertozzi’s Bytesize.

Finally, DigiDay collected the responses of a number of agency execs to CES, including leadership from Razorfish, Digitas and Big Fuel:

Avi Savar, founder, Big Fuel

“I was hoping to see the future – what I saw where some really nice TVs. The sheer scale and showmanship of product displays where mesmerizing. That said, there was not much from the major players that I had not seen before. There were new phones, new tablets and some of the best quality HDTV and 3D display I’ve seen to date, but in terms of true innovation, I saw very little. It felt to me like the same stuff I saw two years ago at CES, just better and brighter. I am looking forward to walking the halls of some of the smaller players tomorrow and hoping to see a little more innovation, cutting-edge integration of user experiences, dynamic “connected” environments and perhaps a new product category (or two).”

Follow Avi on Twitter @avisavar.

Ray Velez, global chief technology officer, Razorfish

“CES 2012 didn’t seem to have any of the standout breakthrough technologies like in previous years with groundbreaking innovations like 3D or Microsoft Kinect, but it did seem to have a lot of exciting iterations on existing technologies. Making 3D glassless or smarter TVs ‘smarter’ are good examples. The standouts for me were innovations pulling together multiple technologies, like Ford partnering with health companies to bring healthy computing to sync in their autos and Mercedes announcing Facebook integration. The takeaway for marketers is that there are lots of ways to partner with new technologies to get your messages to a variety of platforms, everything from connected TV and vehicles to smartphones, tablets, and health devices.”

Follow Ray on Twitter @rvelez.

Jordan Bitterman, social marketing practice lead, Digitas

“CES is many things, but increasingly it has become an invaluable time to gather with industry colleagues to move business forward. While it’s true that these are many of the same people we all meet with in our home cities, the concentration of decision-makers combined with the ability to focus on the topics-at-hand without typical workday distractions make these discussions quick, to the point and ultimately very fruitful. On Wednesday, my group of clients and colleagues met with seven different partners across video, data, social and mobile with offerings that we will prioritize in the coming 12 months.”

Follow Jordan on Twitter @jordanbitterman

You can keep up with all the action at CES on Twitter – Look for #vivakices and check out the coverage from @vivaki or any of our below agency Twitter handles:

@digitas
@performics
@starcom_usa
@smgxperts
@mediavestusa
@razorfish
@moxiepulse
@zo_us