“Pulse of the Nation: U.S. Mood Throughout the Day Inferred from Twitter”

Crosscuts: Current Events x Social Media

Backstory: Researchers from Harvard and Northeastern Universities studying the dynamics and characteristics of Twitter, developed a time elapsed cartogram revealing the mood of the country.

Culture Cut: Technology reveals human sentiment and mood.

Commerce Cut: Twitter as a proxy for the American state of mind.

Crosscutting: What attitudes and behaviors are motivated by mood swings?

Brand Opportunity: Mood as a new consumption/purchase occasion.

Market Risk: Knowing what to communicate and message as a brand.

"The Journey of the Entrepreneur: Being an entrepreneur means being able to handle the ambiguity of not knowing how to handle what’s next. Those who handle it are entrepreneurs. Those who don’t aren’t. Take a leap of faith, be happy."

Zaid Khalil, Founder and Principal, Bibzi

Crosscuts: Success x Consumer Goods

Culture Cut: Arab business wisdom

Commerce Cut: http://www.prepropaganda.com/

Crosscutting: Providing entrepreneurs and brand marketers’ in-house thinking from an out-of-house vantage

Brand Opportunity: Thinking for Thinkers

Market Risk: Consumer goods industry consolidation is pigeon-holing small, independent consultancies

Twitter Flocks to 20 Billion Tweets

Crosscuts: Social Media x Language

Culture Cuts: Matti Makkonen is credited with being the father of SMS (Short Message Service) in the early 1980s.  Today SMS is one of the most widely used data-based applications in the world.  Its truly a ubiquitous form and method for communicating in the 21st century via mobile device or computer.  Over 1.5 trillion SMS messages were transmitted in 2009 comprised of no more than 160 characters.

The primary consumer form of daily communication and language is non-verbal, grammatically incorrect but highly personal and relevant; wireless subscribers worldwide donated charity dollars to Chinese, Haitian and Portuguese earthquake victims.  The devices we use creates new human expression, which is the essence of life.

Commerce Cuts: Twitter altered the conversation of dialogue.  It shortened SMS by 20 characters and gave the medium a social announcement value.  By July 31, 2010 Twitter has generated over 20B Tweets since its inception in 2006.

Crosscutting: The marketing world is driven opinion and sentiment.  Brands can only influence community and dialogue so long as they have something relevant to contribute.  Humans are expressing themselves more and being less passive to marketing messaging and communications.  But we’ve only just begun to understand how some consumers behave in digital microcosms.  What’s the future implication of 140 characters on language, relationships and brand experiences?

Brand Opportunity: Twitter’s real value could be its ability to help brands connect with their consumer segments.  But how?  As an open exchange for information and conversation, Twitter is as much a utility as it is a product.  Capitalizing on the benefits of on-demand public conversation can lead in many directions.  Could Twitter develop a new brand-to-consumer language and protocol?  Or systems of communications and messaging that innovate the current Twitter delivery methodology? 

Market Risk: Twitter still lacks a viable business plan.  Astronomical growth is impossible to maintain.  New users are increasing at a decreasing rate.  Brands are still unsure exactly how to use Twitter to differentiate.  When will 140 characters be considered too much effort?  When will consumers change or adopt new behaviors in personal broadcasting?

Are We There Yet? Travelocity Seeks New Direction

Crosscutting: Innovation x Travel & Leisure

Culture Cut: Travel agents have been helping travelers get from ‘a to b’ since Thomas Cook (TCG) founded the modern travel agency in the 1850s.  Functioning as market makers, travel agencies survived for decades as the only mass outlet for airlines, cruises, and hotels to distribute and sell their products.  The internet changed the role of the travel agent and their business model overnight.  Now consumers are the travel agents - researching and purchasing travel products, and sharing these branded experiences through social networks and media.  

Commerce Cut: U.S. travel market (e.g., airline, lodging/hospitality, car rental, cruise, tour, travel agency sales, vacations), annual sales are conservatively $270-$300B.  The online travel agentindustry (OTAs) is a highly concentrated market dominated by four brands who control 97% of the category activity: Expedia (EXPE), Priceline (PCLN), Orbitz (OWW) an, owned by Texas Pacific Group and Silverlake Partners, which owns the Travelocity brand.

Travelocity is the second or third largest OTA with 2009 annual revenues of approximately $10B+.  The category has grown through acquisition; Travelocity buying Lastminute.com, Europe’s leading independent online travel group, and Zuji.com, an Asian market OTA.  Expedia owns Hotwire.com, and Orbitz owns Cheaptickets.com.  

Crosscutting: We travel through different Cultures to discover and make connections we otherwise couldn’t make being limited by geography.  Traveling is the nucleus of social media - we travel, experience, meet new people, and then return and report to anyone who will listen.  Humans don’t need brands or instructions to find new experiences or adventures; consumers gain insight and make decisions in large part, based on what other people say.  Most of us move in the same direction and we use social media and networks to stay on the path that Culture is pursuing.  

Brand Opportunity: As Travelocity reviews its advertising strategy it should consider a singular focus that leverages one brand mark and identity.  I think the gnome, while incredibly successful as an awareness tool, has lived its useful life.  Travelocity provides a consumer benefit inherent in its name, but you’d never know it because it gets drowned out by the gnome, William Shattner, and the guy in the hovercraft.  Of the four OTA brands Travelocity is the only one with travel in its brand name.  Travelocity needs to get consumers to add “locity” every time they say ‘travel.’   I think there’s more room to travel in connecting the brand to the user.

What is the consumer experience and engagement model for Travelocity’s mission: committed to being the traveler’s champion - before, during and after the trip, providing the most comprehensive guarantee?

Market Risk: There is very little differentiation in the business models, value propositions and creative strategies of the top 4 OTAs.  They all sell exactly the same product at generally the same price, exactly same way. 

Be wary of Google’s (GOOG) foray into travel but appreciate their failures as a case study.  Natural search begins with Google.  Seventy-three percent of travelers search an average of 10-12 times before they book.  And using Google products creates a natural preference for its ecosystem of adjacent experiences - maps, photos, video, the ‘local modules.’

Location-Based Media, Like Herding Skydivers

Crosscuts: Innovation x Social Media

Culture Cut: When humans share an environment a community is born.  When skydivers jump in groups they move at high velocity in close proximity to one another.  They have only so much time to interact before they must pull the rip cord, as the ground rushes towards them at 150MPH.  Could a brand other than Red Bull, fit neatly into this space and keep up?  I doubt it.  Location-based social networks move too fast for most brands.

Social networks represent the human layers and dynamic structures of associations through Cultural behavior, associations and consumer beliefs.  These affiliations keep us invested emotionally, professionally and functionally in a digital, wireless and mobile diaspora.  Technology is no fun if you can’t share it with others.  But aren’t location-based social networks redundant and artificial communities - like organizing people in your address book by brand and product classifications and using emoticons?

Commerce Cut: Customer loyalty and rewards programs are tactics of a larger sales and marketing strategy.  Is loyalty reward or is reward loyalty?  Loyalty and CRM programs, along with customer satisfaction and quality assurance, help brand owners sustain reliable cash flow streams, which are the direct function of shifts in consumer and shopper behavior.  Technology has increased the rate at which we buy and consume traditional products, but lags how we adopt new experiences.  Start-up brands using innovation and technology are solving, correcting and inventing consumer applications for new communities to live even more connected lives.  But this represents a fraction of the 2.5% of Innovators.

Crosscutting: Social media network brands and the branded apps that power them are fast approaching colliding into one another.  They are becoming disposable digital experiences, deleted at the press of a button.  And rightfully so, its a social network, there is no real commitment, it’s casual, fleeting, and it’s all about right now.  Tomorrow doesn’t figure into the picture.  When brands use Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrl, TriOut or Loopt, they should remember it’s like renting a body.

Brand Oppty: The biggest opportunity for foursquare is to define its value proposition beyond the six-month business plan.  Start-up’s often chase bad revenue to keep the lights on and forsake plans to generate quality revenues to sustain the business to exit strategy. Foursquare needs a more logical role that more of American can access.  After cities and metros, colleges and universities, what other dense geographic and demographic experiences are larger enough, and mobile, to support its VC-backed business model?

Market Risk: Location-based social networks require an incentive; consumers cycle in and out of new relationships, uncommitted, advancing to the next technology in search of a better deal.  It’s kind of like credit card shopping on interest rates.  The category has low customer satisfaction and loyalty rates.

A technology explosion has created branded experiences most of us are not ready to consume yet.  There’s a silently growing technology fatigue.  Consumer are becoming confused which leads to late adoption and participation.  Whether rewards, loyalty or game, Foursquare will have to prove to Culture that its function is greater than its form.  

How many legitimate consumer occasions does Foursquare yield?  What’s to stop Facebook, Google (GOOG), or new technology applications in search of a brand positioning, from encroaching upon Foursquare’s territory?  Will there be enough of us that want to relate with each in this manner to co-consume?

WhoHub: Defining Who You Are →

Crosscuts: Innovation x Social Media

Whohub is a clever alternative and adjunct to Linkedin.  For creative professionals seeking to express, define, and promote their life’s mission beyond closed-in questions, Whohub is a reasonable proposition.  Essentially it’s an online interview categorized by industry classification; open-ended qualitative format of logical and reasoning-based questions. 

The product positioning lies somewhere in between a social-to-professional online application - more democratic; perhaps an undefined but emerging grey area?  I’m not totally sure how much energy it can create organically, but it seems to follow the rhyme and reason of most new web brands, it has two syllables.  The rest is user experience, it does force you to concentrate on what you want out of life and why.  Who knows…

Microsoft’s Kinky Behavior

Crosscuts: Innovation x Social Media

Kinky (adj): relating to, having or appealing to unconventional tastes.

Microsoft (MSFT) is kinky.  The Kin, a mobile phone for the “social generation, joins a growing list of kinky brand behavior where innovation lacks an authentic consumer insight.  Let me recall some of Microsoft’s recent kinky behavior: Web TV, Zune, Windows Vista, and I have to include Bing as well - what the hell is a decision engine?! 

Initially, consumers adopted Microsoft products because they had to.  There were no better options for software and operating systems.  But over the last ten years, as the brand attempted to transition from PC to consumer electronics, it has failed miserably.  Today, not only has Microsoft not been able to make Windows Mobile relevant, it lacks the vertical integration necessary to propel a smartphone to market.  It’s a sad day when the world’s largest software brand can’t even get out of the gate and beat Palm.  Tragedy.

Meanwhile, Apple (AAPL) and Google’s (GOOG) corporate Cultures have embraced users as they are being born.  The platforms, technology, and products these brands create are highly intuitive, making us prefer to adopt their values viscerally.  Investors have taken note as well.  I am sure there’s strong coefficient between brand preference and stock performance.  Currently, no analyst covering Apple has a SELL recommendation, whereas Microsoft has mixed consensus. 

Surely, Microsoft is too big to fail but its recent behavior leaves a lot to be desired.  Over a five-year period, the rate of change has been staggering for Apple relative to Google and Microsoft.  Microsoft’s kinkiest behavior was not buying Apple when it had the opportunity.