New Next: Geotility

Thanks, Faris. He's the one who came up with that word just now upon reading the column. My title was originally The Journey is the Destination, not "The Journey's the Thing." Don't really know what happened there.

At the beginning of the summer, the third annual Come Out & Play Festival hit New York with a bang – people blanketed the city, turning themselves into game pieces and using space in a creative way to have a good time. From a New York City vs. London photo scavenger hunt to a multiplayer game in which GPS triggers from mobile devices reward teams with tools to help them win, Come Out & Play capitalizes on “city-size fun” by making a city the game board.

Games aren’t the only things that have made places the center of focus: over a year ago, we talked about Dodgeball and Helio's Buddy Beacon as location-themed examples of real time documentation. We’ve come a long way since then: combining geography with technology has progressed exponentially. And yet, our prediction is that it’s only a hint of what’s still to come.

Location-based services are nothing new to us: from package tracking to looking up driving directions, we’ve been using geographic information to help us do things for years. But the current wave of geographically aware technology that has the ability to literally know where we are adds a completely new dimension to our things.

Find a place
Mobile handsets like the iPhone and Nokia Nseries devices seem to be causing the biggest splash in mobile mapping, heightening services and behaviors that we are already familiar with. We use Yelp.com to find new restaurants, bars and boutiques, for example. Now when you’re in a new neighborhood and away from your computer, you can find out which restaurants are blocks away from where you’re standing, and how to get there (you can even add photos taken with your mobile device and write reviews while you’re still there).

Find your friends
Remember Twitter, the micro-blogging platform that let’s you know what your friends are doing? What about Dodgeball, where all of your friends registered on the site are notified on your whereabouts every time you text message? Picture these two services together and on steroids. A new Twitter client for the iPhone (and, probably by the time you read this, for other handsets as well) lets you to see all other users that are close by, so you can know what they’re doing and where they’re doing it.

Tag your photos
Geo-tagging is a behavior quickly becoming ingrained in our photo-uploading activity; now a GPS-enabled mobile device can tag your photos as you upload them directly from your phone so you don’t have to think about it. Handsets aren’t the only players in this space, either: Eye-Fi is a wireless memory card that automatically adds location labels to photos that are uploaded to the Internet, directly from your camera.

I had a ton of fun writing the October 2008 column I submitted last Friday; I'll be able to share at the end of next month.

I'll probably be cross-posting this on House of Naked in a few minutes...

People as corporations

Hello. I have scanned the column, so here it is.



I mentioned this on Flickr, but I'm a small bit upset that For the Love of God wasn't included as a visual. It would have been great! It's a good shot of Jay-Z, but... well, here you go.


Finally got the text version, guys. Here you go.

People have been promoted as and acting like brands since the beginning of time, far before brands themselves even existed. From Napoleon’s empire to Martha Stewart’s, the most exciting corporations around are the actual people who started them.

Fortune favors the bold. We live in an ever-empowered world, where one day you can be writing a blog in a garage and the next you could be Nick Denton. You can go from rapping in Brooklyn to being a multi-faceted corporation courted by the UN. Or from young British artist to superstar and cultural influencer. Today’s creative class brings entrepreneurship to a new level: These people-as-corporations are selling their personas as much as anything.

>> Damien Hirst

This Bristol, England-born internationally renowned artist has helped democratize the art world as we know it today, bringing his often controversial works to the mainstream as few contemporary artists have been able to do. Hirst is now the most expensive living artist, having recently sold his diamond-encrusted platinum skull, “For the Love of God,” for $67 million (he played an active role in raising the price — and his own worth — by being a member of the investment group that purchased the skull). In addition to his art and co-running his restaurant on the coast of Devon, 11 The Quay, Hirst has also recently collaborated with Levi’s and designed a pair of 501s for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

>> Jay-Z

The Brooklyn native made his name with freestyle rapping. But adding to his net worth of nearly $550 million, Jay-Z served, until very recently, as president and CEO of Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella Records. He co-founded the clothing brand Rocawear, co-owns a sports bar, the 40/40 Club, and is a part-owner of the New Jersey Nets NBA franchise. He doesn’t just own companies either: he participates. He has recently opted for being
co-brand director for Budweiser Select. Jay-Z has teamed up with the UN to raise young people’s awareness of the global water crisis. He’s acquired a property in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood where he’ll build the flagship for his five-star J-Hotel chain.

>> Nick Denton

With a love of journalism and a good sense of timing, Brit Nick Denton realized the potential of blogs in the early 2000s. The former reporter for the Financial Timeslaunched Gizmodo in 2002 and it was an instant success, drawing tech heads and gadget lovers from all over. Gawker came next and became the go-to for anybody interested in celebrity and media gossip. Others followed, fueling his blogospheric rise. Denton’s methodology for Gawker Media is quite simple: If he can picture himself and others wanting to read it, it shall exist. He must be doing something right; Nick Denton’s wealth from his ventures is currently estimated at almost $290 million.

ta-da.

New Next 08 [on retail]

For some reason we haven't received the January issue of Media Magazine yet, so I haven't gotten the chance to show you that column. Well, they were very nice and just sent me the PDF, so here you guys go. It's about retail as an underutilized channel (more interesting than it sounds, actually; I was initially dreading writing it but then had a super time doing so!).



Here is the text, for those of you who want fewer (i.e. zero) clicks:

When you work in advertising and media circles, the thought of retail communications can be a dull one, bringing to mind uninspired point-of-sale displays and staff push tactics. Retail executions from the same said agencies are, for the most part, produced as an afterthought, often containing the same messaging as the rest of a campaign as though a consumer will behave with all touch points in the same way.

Often, the most creative we can be is with a shelf wobbler. When you consider the huge opportunity to give consumers an experience in which to physically immerse themselves; retail can be the missing link to establishing a full connection with your brand.

Apple got it right years ago: They transformed the torturously lackluster computer purchasing experience into a beautifully simple and service-focused one that truly matched the aesthetic of the rest of the brand. Today, some argue that the best ad Apple ever produced was its store.

Supreme is a NYC-based skate brand that keeps their consumers in mind: A few years ago they installed an immense plywood skate bowl into their multistoried Los Angeles store. Inspired by the empty swimming pools that were home to skateboarders in the 1970s, the formerly unused piece of retail space was transformed into something that helps customers interact with the brand.

Benjy's, one of the biggest sandwich retailers in the UK, unveiled their "Delivered" service in 2003. They drive to business parks with "vanchised" vans that unfold into fully functional coffee and sandwich shops. (Think the poshest roach coach ever.) This was both good for the consumers and also gave Benjy's the opportunity to enter into areas where they previously had no presence.

Uniqlo remains consistent in its theme of accessible simplicity: Before it opened its doors in New York's SoHo, the retailer moved crate-like pop-up stores around the city to show that the affordable and label-free clothing was shipped straight from Tokyo and made accessible to us. Their Japanese design philosophy translated perfectly to the store, neatly stacking and lining up brightly-colored clothes - a retail design style that is usually reserved for high-priced fashion houses and boutiques in the United States. Uniqlo also opened a concept store called UT that celebrates the democratization of the T-shirt. When the store opened, the four-story space was stocked with nothing but T-shirts in clear plastic canisters and at affordable prices, designed by avant artists like Terry Richardson and Gareth Pugh.

When retail is needed in the marketing mix, look at it as an exciting opportunity instead of a burden. Make the move beyond the window clings.

The next one will be published in about two weeks, which was even more fun to write because I got to do a ton of research on Damien Hirst. And that's all the teaser you get for now. Have a great weekend everyone.

[x-posted to House of Naked]