Out From the Digital Stone Age: Tablet PCs Emerge Along with a Lesson

Perhaps one of the hardest tasks to man-up – or woman-up to in my case, whether in PR circles or just around the evening dinner table, is to admit when you’re wrong.  Of course, this is mammoth amounts of scholarly work written on why that is the case, but I’ll spare you the details, provide the obligatory link to a book about “cognitive dissonance,” and get to the point of this blog post.

Recently I’ve blogged about two issues: the trouble with statistics, that approximately 47 percent of people like to make them up and the remaining 53 percent fail to interpret them correctly, (yes, that adds up to 100) and that tablet PCs and e-readers, while no doubt part of the mobile digital mix, are not likely to explode in popularity — at least until they are more completely untethered from Wifi-only Internet access.

Well, at least when it comes to the tablet computer portion of the above paragraph….(here goes) I may have been wrong. That wasn’t too hard.

An article in the technology section of CNN.com yesterday reported that adult tablet ownership roughly doubled during the holiday season jumping from 10 percent in mid December to 19 percent ownership in early January, only a few weeks later, and women were the biggest new converts. The Pew research behind the article attributed the surge to continuing price falls (some tablets are selling for as little as $99) and the aggressive marketing efforts of competitors like the Kindle Fire and Barns and Noble’s Nook as they continue nudging their way into what’s predominantly been an iPad 1 and iPad 2 domain.

What’s more, investment bank Morgan Keegan reduced its estimate of iPad shipments in December from 16 million to 13 million, a drop of 19 percent, while estimating that the Kindle Fire sold between 4 million and 5 million units, according to the article. An industry analyst cutting back on its predicted iPad sales is further evidence that the tablet market might be getting more complex –even if the Wifi umbilical cord hasn’t been fully cut.

While a doubling of anything is relatively easy when you start with low figures, (having $2 in your wallet when you started with $1 is a 100 percent increase) it’s quite possible this article and the Pew research are the first indications that tablet computers are finally coming into their own. Think about it, tablets were “born” right around and just after the momentary Netbook craze from roughly 2007, Kindle’s launch year, and 2010, the iPad 1 début. As “second borns” you’d think they’d be more refined products, flying off shelves. Well, it may have taken some warm up time, but apparently, they’re beginning to do just that.

With that coveted laptop-sized screen, who knows, 2012 could really be the “year of the tablet” never mind the smartphone. As communication professionals, it might be time to start thinking and re-thinking both for ourselves and for our clients ways in which tablet PCs can better disseminate a marketing message or push a product.

We already know they’re great for downloading books, have a knack for beating the statistical odds, and have proven this PR professional mistaken. (At least for the moment)

Now let’s see what else they can do.

Staking a Claim in Mobile Travel: Not Just Popular, Pragmatic and Profitable

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of TravelInkd’, originally appeared on Hotel Executive on 1/18/12. 

Mobile a Must: Pragmatic trumps popular

If 2011 for hotel owners was all about learning from and joining the mobile masses simply because it was the “in” thing to do for our tech-savvy patrons, 2012 is rapidly shaping up to be the year where mobile becomes a must. In other words, the mobile marketing landscape has rapidly matured and the training wheels are coming off. This coming of age can mean only one thing: The time for hotels to launch their mobile presence is now. Not after the post-holidays’ travel slow down, and not in the run-up to Valentines Day or the season’s first spring breakers.

Right now.

From Training Wheels to Two-Wheeler: Mobile Matures

As with other trends in the hotel industry, it is customers who are driving mobile’s niche-to-need changes. Today’s on-the-go traveler expects to be connected wherever they are throughout their trip experience and that connectivity is expanding at a staggering rate. Earlier this year, more than half of all mobile phone sales (56%) were smartphones, and the total number of US smartphone owners jumped to 82.2 million people this summer – that is 35% percent of the 234 million Americans who use mobile devices 13 and up. Think about that statistic for a few moments…

Even a lighthearted (but with serious implications) October 2010 survey by Mashable highlights just how connected consumers have become. When asked what they would give up to keep their mobile phones for a week:

• 70% said they would give up alcohol;
• 63% said goodbye to chocolate;
• And a combined 63% said they would consider doing without their toothbrush, shoes, or computers.

Considering those (rather shocking) expectations, it’s critical that hotels deliver. Hotels, as with other businesses, must go where their customers are going. Why? For one thing, the booking window, once a lengthy time frame where travelers corresponded with travel agents, business travel managers, and the like, has now shrunk considerably. Smartphones can literally book travel itineraries, price hunt, and check-in to a given hotel – assuming it has a sophisticated mobile platform.

But it’s more than just smartphone adoption rates. A recent survey by Greystripe, a mobile marketing company, found that 47% of iPad users who were considered frequent travelers (defined as a person who traveled at least twice a year) booked hotels via their mobile device, and were the most common mobile platform to do so, beating out both iPhone users and Android phones, the study found. So when I talk about the mobile channel, I am talking about tablets too.

And not to be outdone, TripAdvisor, a travel website and now travel app provider, announced in November a collection of 20 free Mobile City Guide apps (for 20 cities) that, in addition to point-by-point directions and general tourist information, includes hotel reviews. Some of the most downloaded cities include: Beijing, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and New York. If potential customers are relying on the these mobile apps to determine their booking choice, (even if they’re not booking through the app directly) it’s important hoteliers and their staffs get on board too, monitoring reviewer activity and having a system in place that incentivizes its customers to use said apps and write positive reviews, assuming they’ve had a superior experience.

Facebook, too, both in its mobile and desktop iterations, is becoming a vital space for digital commentary on travelers’ hotel experiences, which ultimately drive bookings and revenue. Some 30% of travelers who booked their hotel online said they would use the social networking site (as well as Twitter and LinkedIn) to comment on their hotel and trip. The study, by Milestone, a hotel marketing company, also showed that each social message posted by a guest drove five to six unique visitors to a hotel website.

Whether it’s apps, mobile websites, social media, or even the implementation of mobile phone-based digital room keys, (Open Ways, a mobile-based access management and security company, announced its launching of “Mobile Key 4 All,” a software and hardware solution) where hotel guests simply point or swipe their phone through a type of digital reader, all three outlets fall into the mobile sphere.

Driving home the point, Ian Carrington, Google’s mobile advertising and sales director, made his opinions on the mobile revolution clear: “Mobile isn’t ‘the next big thing’ – it is already very much upon us,” he said. Or, staying closer to the hotel industry, consider what Tom O’Rourke, founder and CEO of O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing, had to say: “[Apps are] an opportunity through a mobile channel to connect with a guest before, during, and after his stay.” Enough said.

Airborne Perspective: What we can learn

Considering the close ties that the hotel and airline industries share, (one relies on a large share of their customers from the other for business) it’s incumbent on hoteliers to take a page from the recent past and consider their future.

It’s hard to over state the impact mobile communications has had on airlines, especially as it relates to ancillary revenues. Ancillary revenues, or ways in which airlines unbundle specific services and monetize and customize the traveler experience, has largely emerged in concert with the mobile platform. Today more than 2,000 aircraft crossing the world’s oceans and continents are Wi-Fi enabled. Innovations like this have helped airlines offset rising fuel costs and generally prosper in a still-challenging economic climate. Unlike the hotel industry, which has been slow to adopt mobile, most airlines have already established the basics: allowing for mobile check-in, 2D bar code boarding passes, and many have mobile booking capability. Going forward, industry analysts predict additional mobile services like being able to select premium seating, club access, or the pre-purchasing of meals. Further down the road, (or runway), airlines will consider adding location based services, which provide travelers with location sensitive advertisements and promotions, as well as monitoring social media for commentary on the entire travel experience. Finally, the burgeoning field of NFC, or Near Field Communications, is also seen as a significant game changer going forward, allowing travelers to simply swipe their NFC-enabled mobile devices and perform a host of activities like check-in, pay for goods, (mobile wallet), and even exchange vital travel information, like last-minute itinerary changes, with other travelers, family or friends. Imagine having that type of capability at the check-in desk?

The Mobile Concierge: Booking (and banking on) future success

Boarding passes aside, nearly every mobile avenue airlines are pursuing has relevancy for the hotel industry too. In a competitive marketplace where OTAs (online travel agencies) are vying for an increasing piece of the booking revenue pie, mobile can be a way for hoteliers to once again directly connect with their loyal, returning customers, and attract new ones as well. For all the industry’s booking efforts, (OTAs included) global occupancy rates remain at roughly 60 percent. In other words, there’s plenty more the industry can and should do to attract more guests. Mobile booking, mobile check-in and check-out, cardless key systems, even mobile hotel restaurant reservations, gift shop rewards points, and in-room food and media selections, are exactly the types of services travelers are beginning to expect. If many similar services are already being offered by airlines for travelers in transit, why should these mobile amenities end when they get off the plane?

They shouldn’t.

From work, to travel, to recreation, mobile and smart mobile devices are remaking every facet of our collective lives. And in so doing, the technology is reshaping the way in which hoteliers must interact with and connect with their customers. Before long, hotels that fail to adopt these changes will look like antiques and will be losing revenue and guests. There’s no need to discard the leather-bound guest book just yet. Just remember the rapidly maturing mobile landscape is where the majority of today’s travelers are looking to sign in next.

In every touch point of travel lifecycle, from booking to check-in and home again, mobile has become a must.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of TravelInkd’, originally appeared on Hotel Executive on 1/18/12. 

When Big Brother Watches YouTube With the Rest of Us: Digital Divide 2.0

Ahhhh, technophobia! No, I didn’t make this term up nor is it an irrational fear of a certain musical genre that will remain nameless (though obvious). Technophobia as defined by dictionary.com is “an abnormal fear of or anxiety about the effects of advanced technology.”

With this definition in mind, tech journalist Bill Robinson, a friend and colleague of mine, in his recent Huffington Post column, raised alarm over what he calls the new “digital divide.” No longer is the digital divide over the technological haves and have nots – those who have computers and Internet access versus those who don’t – but rather between those who have become outright addicted to our anywhere and everywhere gadget-gorged world and in so doing, are dividing themselves from the shrinking percentage of those who are living slightly off the digital grid, achieving that increasingly lost something we used to call: balance.

While some might say Bill is off his digital rocker, a real-life “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel,” (Google that, if you don’t know what I’m referencing) I do not. Besides, anyone who was a true technophobe in keeping with the spirit of the definition that framed this piece, would not be posting their thoughts on the Huffington Post.

That said, Bill’s concerns that just maybe we’re all a little too linked, synched and wired is more than a just his conclusion. To buttress his argument, Robinson sites a recent survey by Morgan Stanley that found that 91 percent of Americans have their cell phones within reach at every moment of the day. Just to clarify, that means every 86,400 seconds that make up a 24-hour day. (And yes, I used a Blackberry app to calculate that) The study also found that our collective time spent with our glowing gadgets is outpacing the time we spend asleep.

What a sad bunch of folks we are.

Bill isn’t a technophobe any more than I am. We’re both realists. As a public relations professional and journalist, we interface with the latest and greatest technology on a daily basis. Not only that, but very often communications technology, increasingly in the form of mobile and smartphone adoption, is at the core of what we do.

Navigating this new digital divide successfully doesn’t require an online search engine. All it requires is a dose of common sense, and the recognition that being a hopeless technophile – the opposite of the definition that opened this piece, is just as detrimental as the technophobic response.

To be sure, changing habits takes time and marketers from every corner continue to promote technology’s hyperactive presence. But tonight, when you’re finished reading this post off what will still likely be your Blackberry, Android, iOS device or laptop, remember to power down, turn off, or put your gadgets to sleep and join the remaining 9 percent of Americans that presumably do not have their mobile phone in constant reach. I have a sneaking suspicion that doing so will not only recharge their batteries, but it’ll recharge yours as well.

Sweet dreams.

98 Percent of Statistics Are Made Up – And Then Some

“A [person] may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals a day, but that is not a good way to live.”

Nor is it a good way to use statistics.

The above words, attributed to US Supreme Court Associate Justice, Louis Brandeis, underscore the age-old trouble with this black sheep cousin of fully respected mathematics; a discipline we call statistics. For as much as statistics attempt to illuminate an issue, address a concern, highlight a trend, or flesh out a public opinion, statistics are as ambiguous as they are helpful. As a public relations professional, I estimate that 40% of my workweek (sorry, I couldn’t resist) is spent awash in statistics, some good, some bad, and many that leave me wondering “huh?!”

A new study by marketing company, Ifbyphone, has me doing just that. In its 2011 State of Marketing Measuring Report, the company found that while 82% of marketing executive managers expect all marketing channels, (print, TV, radio, mobile, online, email) to have a measurable return on investment, (ROI) only a paltry 29% of respondents said they understood how to measure and achieve that aim across all channels, with offline platforms being the most difficult to measure.

So does that mean the other 71% who admit to not having a clue deserves to go back to statistics 101?

Not necessarily.

For as earthshaking as pronouncements such as these sound, when you dig a little deeper, the gap really isn’t that surprising after all. Besides, don’t most effective bosses set the bar high and on occasion, leave their staffers scrambling to rise to the challenge at hand? It’s also not surprising since measuring ROI has long been marketers Holy Grail. How exactly does one measure word-of-mouth? Where is the hard money guarantee that a multichannel public relations campaign was any more successful than performing a mass emailing or any other type of initiative for that matter? In economics that’s called opportunity cost.

But in marketing, opportunity cost is a lot harder to measure.

The good news is that with the exception of social media – the online world’s digital word-of-mouth – 59% of respondent said offline media was the hardest metric to track. Why is that the good news you ask? Because as we begin 2012, Internet and mobile web marketing continues to gobble up a greater percentage of the marketing mix. Not in a cannibalistic manner, but in a complimentary one to traditional channels. Feature and mobile smartphones, with a combined penetration rate of 95%, (if you believe that statistic) offer some of the best marketing metric tracking ability including click and redemption rates, surveys, opt-in, and others. Already, it is estimated that US companies spend 30% of their marketing budgets online.

So while I wouldn’t dismiss a report like this and cry statistical BS, I’d be sure to keep an open mind whenever the topic of statistics comes up.

Or, to personalize it some more think about it like this:

I could tell you that statistically speaking; I recently placed my 2.59 children on board a plane back to England following the holiday break. I could tell you that because that’s the average size of an American family.

I could tell you that. But when it comes to my family I’d be telling a nearly six-tenths lie.

Go figure. (Pun intended)

The ABCs of the CES (Consumer Electronics Show): An Abbreviation on Steroids and Why PR Professionals Should Get Pumped

OK. So maybe after 45 years and countless interactions with marketing professionals the Consumer Electronics Show aka CES, a somewhat clunky if accurate title with the verbal weight of a 60s vacuum cleaner, could use a bit of retooling. Even the shortened letters CES which the event has come to be known by, stand for other lovely little gems like: the Center For Epidemiologic Studies, Cholesterol Embolization Syndrome, and the Compulsive Eating Scale, to rattle off a few.

But here’s one thing to chew on – compulsive eating aside. Whatever the annual event lacks in nomenclature flavour it has made up for in word-of-mouth buzz. The approaching annual winter gala from January 10-13, held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, has grown from a meager 17,500 attendees to become a temple of consumer electronic and digital gadgets, beckoning all to come ooh and ahh at the tech world’s latest and greatest. Ever wonder what the Blu-ray Disc, the 1975 Pong home version by Atari, and 3DTV have in common for instance? All groundbreaking technologies were introduced to the public at this must-attend gathering.

Increasingly, though, the event, which already attracted nearly 130,000 in 2011, (and is forecasting 150,000 this year) is casting an even wider audience net now. This is exactly why communication professionals – even ones who don’t feel their clients exactly fit the technological bill – should be lining up to attend in what ever way they can, be it in-person visually or virtually via Facetime, Skype, Twitter, and whatever else they’ve got.

The widening net is a natural response to the changing nature of the gadgets themselves. For much of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, computer and video game talk dominated the CES. This was especially the case in 2005 when Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, as a keynote speaker, inadvertently caused an infamous PC staple – the “blue screen of death” when unveiling the new Windows Media Center. Today’s smart devices, razor-thin TVs and other must-have gizmos demonstrate a waning of this trend while highlighting another: the continued blurring of technological lines and smartening up of devices as new products literally talk to one another and whose functions become embedded with each other. Some like to call this the “digital loop.” Dell has been a CES no-show for four years already, and Apple backed out before that, choosing instead to launch its own New Year product extravaganza later in the month and Microsoft says it will be powering down its floor room both in 2013.

Fitting this change, this year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Dieter Zetsche, the Chairman of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz. What does an automaker have to do with electronics and gadgets other than what’s under the hood, you ask? Everything – if consumers expect to be able to seamlessly link their smartphones, their hands free blue tooth receivers, their digital address books, their daily schedules, their music and whatever else is churned out next to onboard computer technology. Whether it’s cars or cameras, and anything that doesn’t start with a ‘c’ in between, any communication devices that help our clients get out their message is something that as public relations professionals we should be vigilant in investigating and learning more about.

There’s been much written about technological reluctance from companies, especially as it relates to the power and reach of social media. Attending and learning about the latest toys that integrate function and communication are a great way to get a start on the new year – as clients continue fleshing out their in-house and out-sourced 2012 marketing and promotional strategies.

But like any successful trade show – even ones that are as device dependent as the CES – the quality of the several-day event is equally rooted in the power of human connection. Like Jeff Levick, Chief Advertising Officer of Spotify, a UK-based streaming music service, said in a recent Ad Age article, “You could spend six months meeting all your clients and customers, or you can do it in six days.” So for all the talk of world-changing and client-pleasing ad-ons, or accelerometer-less fitness-tracking digital watches, simply attending the Vegas show should be numero uno on your New Years resolutions list, particularly if you’ve been meaning to attend.

So maybe the Consumer Electronics Show is a dated event title. But there’s no denying that the mass meeting of tech and marketing minds alike will create a heck of a lot of Cool Entertaining Synergy. That’s what’s really behind the CES after all.

So Long 2011, The Year Of Distractions

And welcome 2012, the year of pause, thought and enriching the brain!

It’s been several weeks since I posted anything, which is rather shameful for a blog.  My reasons?  An insane end-of-year rush to complete client deadlines, several new accounts and the inability to spend any time devoted to feeding my brain or thinking (which almost always leads to my being more productive). Isn’t it ironic that being “busier” actually moved me backwards by the year’s end?

So after two weeks of being immersed in reading and, well, doing nothing, I’m ready to tackle a year that will be filled with less rush and panic-driven deadlines and instead filled with more time to reflect, think, and strategize – which is really what my clients’ are looking to me for. And, most importantly, enjoy life.

This resolution is not unique to me, however.  The author Pico Iyer wrote a brilliant piece in the New York times last week – “The Joy of Quiet” – lamenting about the loss of quiet and quiet time.

“We have more and more ways to communicate, as, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.  So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.”

Iyer was writing about all of us, wasn’t he?

But enough about me. I’ll be back tomorrow with a post on next week’s CES conference in Las Vegas – and why marketers and agencies should be going.

In the meantime, if you haven’t read the The Joy of Quiet I strongly urge you to.