Incito MentisA blog by Syed Abdul Karim

Not yet? Well you could do what you have always done or if you have a smartphone you are only a few apps and clicks away from planning your dream vacation, right now and the on the go. As part of my trend watching on the Telecom Sector one of the most exciting trends I have come across is known as “Techpowered”. This trend looks at how technology is empowering individuals to do some remarkable things with their internet enabled mobile phones or Smartphones.

Like so many areas, travel and tourism too have been transformed by the developments in mobile technology. So what are we talking about? What if I were to tell you that by using a series of applications on a mobile you can not only plan and book your entire trip but manage everything before, during and after your vacation. Skeptical? Allow me to illustrate!

Plan & Book

If you don’t already know where you want to go. You can check out apps like Globetrotr and Arounder Touch, which will allow you to explore some breathtaking views and hot locations complete with 360 views from all around the world. Let’s say you want to go Italy and you need a visa. Get the Travisa app which will give you visa requirements to over 200 locations. Need the right picture for your visa application. You need PassportCAM to tell you how your photo should look like – snap away, crop and fit. Book a flight using the Expedia app. If you want to book your hotels over a Google Map get the Hotels app. It will map out all the hotels on a map with their prices. Put in your details and get confirmation within the app itself. How about renting a car? Most major rent-a-car companies now have a smartphone app or if your are looking for something cool try Zipcar. They not only let you do the standard stuff like locate, browse and book but give you some extra features like using the app to honk your car, or remotely lock and unlock using the smartphone as the key. Not bad? Want to track flights – get Flight Track Pro. It would give you updates of flight schedules, gate details and inform you in case there is a delay. What’s more if you are tracking flights in US airspace you get the same in-flight information as the passenger on your smartphone which includes details like altitude, speed, expected arrival time, exact location on a map in near real time (meaning it does not update by itself, you need to hit refresh and update it yourself – not that I am complaining) Need help packing? There is an app that can help you make sure you get everything you need. All set to go!

Let the journey begin…

OK. Now what you are going to do when you get there? You can get a voice navigation app and be on your way in your rent-a-car as soon as you land and navigate your way around despite the fact that you are a first time visitor. But what about the language? You dont speak Italian. Well beside the multiple language, key phrases and gesture apps available for Italy you could get something far more cutting edge. How about an Italian OCR (Optical Character Recognition) app? This would allow you to take a picture of any road sign, brochure, leaflet etc and have the smartphone app translate it for you in a language of your choice. You will never have to worry about reading Italian ever again. Want to dine out in style? Use Open Table to find a restaurant, read reviews and make reservations all in one place. It lists over 13,000 restaurants from all over the world. Looking for adventure? You can complement your navigation with a couple of location based social networking apps like Foursquare or Gowalla. They would give you an idea of what’s around you. If you want something even cooler you can get Augmented Reality apps that tell you what you are looking at through your phone camera, pull out Wikipedia data, find restaurants etc. For example if you are in Tuscany you can use this app. The first official Augmented Reality tourism app. See a video demo below.

Ready to fly! How about a mobile check-in? Even better a mobile boarding pass in the form of a QR code. If you are travelling by Lufthansa or Air France. You can go paperless all out.

Next Generation Travel Ecosystem

What we have tried to demonstrate here is a sample of the next generation travel ecosystem. There are still a number of areas that need to come together for it to work for most people. One of the biggest issues is data access cost for travelers. There are a few solutions that club various Wi-Fi Hot Spots together under one offering but it is still not enough, without which data roaming is going to remain a premium luxury for the few. The government side of things is also a major area that needs to be integrated into the digital travel ecosystem. Already we are seeing RFID chips in Passports as a step towards the same. Combining this with NFC technology that is being used in Japan we can see applications like ID documents, NFC to pay for train/bus tickets and integrate with transit systems as a secure access and also leading to a possibility that mobile phones could be used as a hotel key card for example, all taking the travel experience to an unprecedented level.

Reposted from the Luciola Blog

Remember the game, “Passing the Pillow” an object that holds a very near and dear utility becomes an object of fun and play. That is what’s happening to the world of advertising. From something that conveys a message (mostly unsolicited I dare say!) to something that is all about play, participation and like the game “Passing the Pillow”.

As Chuck Brymer, our global CEO puts it, we are now entering the post-consumer world. A world which is changing and transforming at a pace unlike anything we have experienced before. Advertising as we know it is DEAD. Perhaps not so in the cradle of civilization where I happen to be at the moment, but it is only a matter of time!

So what’s the big deal? Nothing much, besides the fact that Facebook has set it’s sight on 1 billion users, Apple is selling one iPad every 26 seconds and the world is going crazy on Twitter with a new tweet per second record of 3085 during the NBA Finals, and this should change as the FIFA 2010 World Cup enters the Round of 16. Oh did somebody say people don’t watch ads any more, they don’t! But Nike hijacked the World Cup with a 3-minute video “Write the Future“ which by the way never aired but broke the record for the biggest audience in the first week of a campaign with 7.8 million views. Are you sure people don’t watch ads any more? Thanks to Nike’s Facebook fans who happen to have participated, played and passed it on to millions of their friends. The era of messages is long gone. It is all about content where everyone is connected to everyone else within six degrees, which means you, my dear reader, are connected to me in no more than six steps!

What’s my point! Our business has been redefined. I would be getting a little carried away if I were to say that we are now in the movie business. But we are definitely a lot closer to that now. Why? If we are to mean anything to the digitally connected swarms then we have to create “ShareValue”, which means the content has to be worthy of generating word of mouse, not just word of mouth!

How do we go about doing so? Well we have to move from traditional definitions of creativity to what is known as “Social Creativity” (as we say at DDB).  If  the work that we do is not something that our audience would like to play with, participate in and pass on to their friends then we have failed at Social Creativity.

There is a lot to more this. A brief explanation does not do justice to the concept. For now I guess a simple illustration shall suffice. One brand which seems to get it and repeatedly so is Toyota. From the way they managed the crisis by participating in a continuous dialogue with their customers using all forms of social media to the way they are creating entertaining content with definite “ShareValue”. I believe they are doing a splendid job. Check this video out and you will see what I mean! Feel free to play and pass on

Today I would like to talk about a hunting trip that I just returned from. Unlike most hunters I am a bit peculiar about what I hunt. I have a passion to hunt for Big-Eyed Deers. They are such rare and beautiful creatures. Like wasabi, once you have discover it it’s hard to go without! Hunting for Big-Eyed Deers is like one of these things. I got introduced to this sport at Ogilvy & Mather but it was James Webb Young who truly showed me the art of the game! Here I would like to narrate to you my experience from this hunting trip in the deserts of Saudi Arabia – one of the most challenging environments to hunt for Big-Eyed Deers!

The first thing about a Big-Eyed Deer hunting trip like any other trip for that matter is the preparation. One needs to look at all the variables in play. What is the terrain like? What environmental challenges need to be overcome? What are the other hunting tribes doing? Who is the Big-Eyed Deer being hunted for? For those who are not familiar with a Big-Eyed deer. It’s a powerful symbolic creature, somewhat like the Pegasus from Greek Mythology. Hunting a Big Eyed Deer is no ordinary hunt! Ensnaring one not only sends a strong message to all the other hunting tribes but the inhabitants of the land also tend to revere the hunt and hold it in high regard in their hearts and minds, sometimes for a very long time.

Following the preparation comes the most grueling and toughest phase of the hunt. The search. What makes this hunt so beautiful is that no one Big-Eyed Deer looks like the other? Most of the time you don’t exactly know what you are looking for. From a distance what may look like the real thing may simply be a small eyed deer. Sometimes, it maybe the progeny of another Big-Eyed Deer and is still not the real thing. Unlike most other creatures who follow a predictable pattern a Big-Eyed Deer can show up anytime. Sometimes it maybe in the wee hours of the night, lurking somewhere in the dark waiting to be found, at other times it will catch you unexpectedly as you go about. It almost seems to me that the Big-Eyed Deer is watching you from a distance, playing hard to get, waiting to see if you are the one who deserves to be graced by it’s presence. Are you the one who will perservere endlessly to find it, not giving up?

It’s like when you have tried almost everything, roped in a dozen or more some small eyed deers on the way, will it reveal itself. And when it does! What a sight it is! You are almost in awe of it’s presence. It’s majestic beauty captivates you. It will fight you like the banshees from Pandora, wrestling to be freed but once you rope him in he will be all yours for life.  Another feather in your hunting cap! You then rightfully give the Big-Eyed deer to the tribe who paid for the hunt but no matter what you do the pride and glory of the hunt will remain with you till the end of time! It’s this high my friends that is one of the most addictive feelings in the world!

So when is the next hunting trip!

Reposted from the Interplay Blog

We are talking about a Lamborghini here. Does it need a pitch? Who does not want to own a Lamborghini? Those who can afford an Enzo or those who already own the last two I guess! Why would you need to make a TV ad for a Lamborghini? Probably the same reason why I am writing this blog. Do something so great and awesome that people end up talking about it. Probably that’s why.

I have seen a lot of TV Commercials. The memorable ones usually make a good thing really great. This is one of them. What makes it great? The key insight. If I were to imagine the brief for this ad I believe the insight would have read something like this – “What makes something great depends on what it is being compared to”. It is all about the ‘power of the relative’. You put something in a different context and suddenly it looks different. I have seen a number of behavioral economists talk about this concept. Allow me to illustrate:

You want a buy a pen that costs $20. You learn there is a place 30 minutes away that is selling the same pen for $10. What do you do? Most people would go for the $10 pen. Similarly there is a suit that you like and it costs $1000. Again you learn that about 30 minutes away another branch of the same store sells the suit for $990. What do you do? Like most rational people you would go for the $1000 suit. This is the power of context. The same $10 would be saved for the same effort of driving 30 minutes away but because of the difference in context a completely different decision is made.

This is what the creative team has done here. They have used this power of context to their advantage. It’s not about comparing a Lamborghini to a Ferrari or a Porsche. No sir! It is about comparing the opportunity to own a Lamborghini to something rarer than giving birth to a Nobel Prize winner or being able to successfully climb Mount Everest!

And therefore as a result, they have managed to make something hot even hotter. This is the power of context. An extremely valuable tool for great advertising I think.

In the Luciola Global Consumer Trends report one of the trends covered is Virtunity. What is Virtunity? It’s how digital technologies like the internet and mobile are enabling individuals to live and interact within virtual communities and in some ways allowing us to indulge and explore our alter ego.

Now another dimension is being added to Virtunity, something touched upon in the report, and that dimension is money. Currency is taking a whole new meaning as community members use virtual money in some very interesting ways. One of the pioneers of virtual currency is Second Life with their Linden Dollars. By the end of 2009 the value of SL’s virtual economy was as high as $567 million, a 65% growth over 2008. While the world grappled with a recession there was one economy that was certainly booming! Now it seems the rest of the world is catching up.

Facebook too has become a big player in the virtual goods business. Imagine this; people are paying $1 for a virtual gift which so far contributes about $30 million to Facebook, a good 10% of their total revenue. No wonder Facebook has recently moved to trademark its Virtual Currency Platform.

Another big contributor to the virtual goods economy is gaming. In this arena World of Warcraft has led the way. To progress in the game players need (virtual) gold. To facilitate players an entire industry had been setup in China to farm for this virtual gold and sell it for real cash! Estimates for this industry stand at anywhere between $200 million to $1 billion. So much so that the Chinese government has had to intervene and put on ban on trading of virtual goods!

According to a report by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), which is an EU agency the worldwide annual trade of real money for virtual goods amount to nearly 1.5 Billion Euros. In another report by an analyst from Wedbush Morgan Securities social gaming is expected to grow to a $4 billion by 2013, which today largely comprises of sale of virtual in-game items. It seems traditional banking has one more challenger to their age old system.  With 4.6 billion mobile phones to 1.6 billion bank accounts, the ‘under-banked’ are already a big potential area for mobile network operators especially after the success of models like M-PESA and SMART Money. But from what we are seeing micro-transactions for virtual goods is also turning out to be a big business as well especially for targeting the younger population between the ages of 13-24.

So far gaming companies and social media networks seem to be the prime beneficiaries of this virtual economy. Is there an opportunity for mobile network operators here as well? Apparently so! Mobile payments companies like Zong, Boku, Paymo make it all look very easy! They are integrating with wireless operators and have a reach of over 1.5 billion customers worldwide. They simply enable a customer to pay for virtual goods using their mobile phones and get charged through their prepaid balance or mobile bill! Another player Mobile First has also entered the arena combining social gaming with their service. These are indications of how ease of use and mobility are being combined to make transactions in the virtual economy fast and simple.

Reposted from the Luciola Blog