Digital Influence Mapping Project

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In 2020, I launched a new digital consultancy, NextNow Digital. All of my new ideas and insights can be found at the new site. The Digital Influence Mapping Project has been a labor of love since I started it in 2005.  This blog may continue to live on in some form or another.

For now, visit NextNow Digital Insights & Ideas. You will find fresh POVs on digital marketing and transformation to help startups, small and mid-size businesses, as well as continued thoughts for enterprise marketers.

Start with this post: Why Launch the Next Digital Consultancy…Now?

 

Content Marketing Designed to Help Behavior Change

Brands who want to get the most out of a content marketing program ought to embrace a user-centered approach to developing and delivering that content. The content and the channels that deliver that content should be designed around prospect and customer intent. What do people want to get done, what decisions do they have to make towards an end, what questions do they have.

Design around that not around what you want them to know about you. Good user-based design will always communicate the latter by “showing” not “telling.”

The ultimate utility and the hardest to deliver against is helping to foster behavior change. Helping people stop smoking, get exercise, manage their money, and so forth. In the property and casualty business, we want to help people lead safer lives. So much of that job is in people’s hands. It is the actions big and small they can take to reduce hazards around the house or risks related to driving.

 

Content to Drive Change: Aetna

Aetna recently released the 11 Initiative by Aetna. To inspire people to reduce or stop smoking (and therefore improve health and health premiums), they created an experience and a content aggregator on Tumblr. The experience (concepted with Ogilvy) revolves around a publicly placed machine that will dispense a rich 11-minute experience for every cigarette surrendered. The core pretense is:

“A recent study found every cigarette you don’t smoke could add 11 minutes to your life. So let’s talk about how you can make the most of them.”

The experiential rewards include petting dogs, a private magic show, seeing acrobats up close and personal. These are essentially the plot lines for online videos to drive relevant awareness of the program.

Users at the Tumblr site are encouraged to post what they would do with 11 extra minutes. For anything displayed on the Aetna site a clear moderation layer helps select the constructive suggestions vs those that may crop up off site.

The 11 Initiative is well integrated into their social channels and has taken over the cover photo on Facebook and Twitter.  The one place it falls down is their Web site. It is completely absent. I suspect that has more to do with how hard it is for companies to make easy-to-update web sites rather that a strategic preference to keep it off the site.

Practically speaking, this content initiative will not reduce smoking. Aetna knows this. But it may inspire people to take that step that will help them stop. It also telegraphs what Aetna is about – wellness. And it gives them a platform to communicate other important topics like key concepts in health insurance coverage. They have taken a big health problem and built a well-integrated program to raise their voice and the voices of customers around it.

 

 

 Content to Drive Change: Prudential

A year or so ago, Prudential launched The Challenge Lab. There are 5 challenges from “I Might Live How Long?: Uncovering why we have trouble imagining a longer life and how that can affect our financial future.” to “I Want it Now: Discovering why we want things now and how that behavior affects our finances later”

It’s all about making us more aware or mindful of our own behavioral economics. What makes us tick or, more accurately, what keeps us from saving for retirement.

This is a terrific site, if a bit cerebral for the average insured. There is a section on risk entitled, “It Won’t Happen to Me: Exploring our tendency to be overly optimistic and how it affects our long-term financial plans.” In each case, professor Dan Gilbert unpacks the issue in about :50 of video. The content is fairly light and leads you down the page to product/service calls-to-action. This is about helping people get smarter, possibly inspired to change and taking an action by connecting with Prudential on retirement planning or other services.  

They remain committed to this platform. I am working hard not to call it a ‘campaign.’ That word seems so inextricably linked to ‘ad campaign.’  “Bring Your Challenges” is a creative platform that adds meaning to the brand and gives them permission to talk more regularly with people about financial decisions that are too often “one and done.”

The extend the program into Facebook and YouTube amongst other platforms. 

In this case their TV ads do extend the BYC creative concept reinforcing Prudential’s role to help people do what they can – even if that means overcoming some of their most basic human tendencies – in order to save and watch out for their future.

 

Two user-driven approaches. Two “big platforms” that say as much about the brand as deliver tangible value to prospects and customers. Two programs helping people do what they need to get done and make the decisions they need to make.

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Idea Bar #15: Crowdsource Fleur Pellerin's Reading List

Hacking the Brief: A New Service for Brands and Agencies

Two ways to always be thinking about customer behavior

Idea Bar #15: Crowdsource Fleur Pellerin’s Reading List

I love reading fiction. Trouble is, I just don’t have that much time to read. I squeak in a bit each day but I am too embarrassed to admit how many pages (paragraphs?) I manage before I fall asleep. I am reading Roberto Bolano’s 2666. It is 893 pages long. Ask me in 2016 if I am still reading it. That’s why I am none too shocked to hear the French culture minister, Fleur Pellerin, admit she hasn’t read a novel in two years. According to the NYTimes,

"As France was celebrating its latest Nobel laureate, Patrick Modiano, the nation’s minister of culture, Fleur Pellerin, shocked the nation’s literati by admitting in a television interview this week that she had not read his novels or any others for the last two years."

Dear France, What Book Should I Read Next?

What a perfect circumstance for Fleur Pellerin to launch a crowdsourcing project to select the next book she will read. By letting the French people nominate books and then have them vote to move them up the reading list, Fleur Pellerin could remedy the problem – the Culture Minister must read French books to represent – and engage the country in a lively book-loving debate.

The list could become cultural homework for foreign students visiting France. It would elevate French authors in the world’s eyes as the crowdsourcing would happen on this lovely international Web we find ourselves on today. It might even jazz up the culture ministry's Web site which interestingly won't tranlsate via Google translate. 

This is such a forgiving and positive idea. It doesn’t come close to the ‘just asking for trouble’ that Walter Isaacson will go through asking “the Internet” to edit his next book. Certainly more meaningful than Buzzfeed’s What Book Should You Start Reading Next? Roulette.

In all fairness, Fleur may not end up with the read that is right for her as she would if she used the personalization filters of Which Book. But as culture minister, she must represent. The biggest risk in the whole crowdsource-the-next-book-she-reads is that the French-speaking Twittersphere will point her towards de Sade's The Misfortune of Virtues vs. Patrick Modiano’s Missing Person.

But if Marissa Mayer can crowdsource her son’s name and if Bon Iver can crowdsource his next tattoo, certainly Fleur can crowdsource the pile of books that sit on her night table.

Seize the opportunity!

 

(and see all of these other crowdsourcing examples and a list of terrific French books already in tranlsation via the French Embassy)

thanks to the Winnipeg Free Press for the beautiful picture.

Collaborating with SME Influencers in Social Content Marketing

I have always been a fan of collaborating with emerging or non-traditional subject matter experts who may have influence on buying customers or other recommenders. Often these are people who have earned an audience over time because they consistently delivered valuable content on a subject that mattered to someone.

• Mom bloggers like those at BlogHer shared about the true stories of mommyhood
• Dad bloggers like OneDad3Girls shared content that distinguished them from moms and was ‘of-use’ to other dads
• Home stylists like my sister, CBellfurnishings, delivered a POV on designing an interior worth living in
• Writers like those at Copyblogger, shred useful ideas on creating compelling content and just being a writer in the age of digital

They are not attached to the usual institutions – big media companies or consultancies. They earned their audience by working social and creating worthwhile and share-worthy content.

CB2 Taps Influencers to Collaborate with Communities

I am a fan of Crate and Barrel. My still, relatively new living room would attest to that. The alternate brand CB2 “is affordable modern for apartment, loft, home.” They recently ran a great program - CB2 Apt - featured in Google Think! that invited influencers and celebrities to design a 5-room apartment via Pinterest and social media, in general.

Dubbed “The first apartment that Pinterest built”, the actual activity ran for a week in May. Five stylist/designers/Pinterest ‘pros’ were assigned a room. They researched looks they felt appropriate and pinned them in Pinterest boards. Followers voted. Ultimately, the stylists constructed their rooms in one 12 hour burst each, an activity that is entertainingly captured in time lapse on the site.

The Value of Influencers

Athena Calderone, a stylist who publishes at Eye Swoon tackled the bedroom. You can see the Pinterest board here. She, like the other influencers, recorded and shared the experience on their own blogs and social platforms. This is one of the three key benefits to CB2:

• Access to a specific and relevant audience (the followers of our 5 stylists)
• The third party credibility that CB2 furnishings meet a certain mark
• The content created before, during and after the actual “styling” event

Applying an ‘Event Activation’ Model

We do a lot of events and are getting better about extending those experiences before, during and after the event via online content marketing. CB2 Apt made the exercise a live event by scheduling the room ‘builds’ all in one week on a compressed schedule. This happens in ‘design house’ events across the country where local stylist/designers are invited to design one room in a house or apartment that will then open to the public as a showcase for a period of time.

• Before: the stylist amassed Pinterest pins of different directions, the crowd contributed, voted
• During: the rooms were built using winning pins as the inspiration. The build was recorded in time-lapse.
• After: the stylists posted about their experience on their own blogs and social platforms and extended the reach of the original content while also personalizing it

Three or four years ago, there was a lot of talk about whether mommybloggers had jumped the shark or more likely that they had become so in-demand that their inevitable professionalization might spoil the earned trust with their followers.

Smart subject matter experts won’t sell out. That doesn’t mean they won’t get paid. It simply means they are mindful of the trust they have built, the value of their reputation and the need to retain their independent POV. While it is not explicitly called out in an obvious way, I am certain that the CB2 Apt stylists were paid for their professional services. Athena Calderone does frame it in her post as being ‘commissioned.’

 

The CB2 Apt content experience is terrific. Their use of ‘subject matter experts w/audience’ demonstrates their appreciation for a new type of industry influencer.

Here's the trailer that kicked it all off:

 

Related articles

CB2 Asks Pinners To Decorate An Apartment In Real-Time [Video]

Pins and Needles: This Apartment was Co-Designed by the Pinterest Hivemind

Home Décor Retailer CB2 Invites Pinterest Users to Furnish Apartment

Pinterest Helped Build APT CB2 and We Got a Tour

Two Approaches to Crowdsourcing Photography for Brands

 

There are 1.5 billion smartphones in the world.  According to Business Insider,

“The annual smartphone growth rate in 2013 is projected to be 44 percent, which is just ever-so-slightly down from 2012′s 45 percent but is still a torrid pace.”

With cameras built-in to most of these phones, that’s a lot of photographers. And with over 16 billion photos published via 3 year-old Instagram, a ton of people are getting better all the time at ‘pretty good’ photography.

We are all adopting new behaviors about capturing, publishing and sharing pictures. Brands can take advantage of this change (and should).

Empower your crowd of could-be photographers

Percolate has done quit a few smart things. I particularly like them because they are committed to design. Not ‘make-it-pretty-design’ but putting design at the heart of their products where they really listen to users and solve problems via design first, technology second. This includes their approach to image capture.

Photographer 2.0 is one of the great features in their platform for sourcing content. Simply put, it’s an app that allows a distributed group of photographers –like your employees in your marcom department – to grab images and send them to the Percolate content workflow. These images pop into a database ready for publishing via your content + community team via Facebook, Instagram, dotcom and more.

Imagine giving select people within your marcom team, the enthusiastic designer in the product design lab, the event-team, even the sales team, the simple instructions to be on the lookout for interesting visual moments. It could be behind-the-scenes at the brand film shoot, on the floor of the trade show, even a spontaneous customer testimonial. The IOS and Android app acknowledges that ‘pretty good’ and authentic photos are valuable.

You don’t need 1000 employees shooting images to make this worthwhile. 

Empower a crowd of photographers

This same idea can be broadened outside an organization to engage a world’s worth of photographers. Imagine yourself a home furnishings brand like Ikea or a property insurance company. What if you could enlist 500 photographers from 35 countries to capture images of what they consider “home?”  As part of a focused program (aka “campaign”), you could get unique content that really brought the idea of home to life via the visual images. These come from experienced photographers working in more of a journalism mode (nimble assignments).

Scoopshot is doing what Visual.ly is doing for infographics – providing a simple to access marketplace of photographers.

Here’s how they explain it:

“Scoopshot currently offers the media and brands unrivalled access to more than 280,000 photographers, and counting, in over 170 countries worldwide. Scoopshot's service is used by more than 60 publications globally including Metro International, WAZ Media Group, the Daily Star, De Persgroep, Ebyline, MTV3 Finland, Expressen and Hürriyet.

Scoopshot has recently launched a new web-based platform, Scoopshot Labs. The new service, published May 2013, aims to make crowdsourcing and authentic mobile photography accessible to everyone, individuals and companies alike.”

As brands adjust their ideas about where content comes from, crowdsourcing visual imagery either through a field-force of friendlies (people who know your brand like employees or agency partners) or through a world-wide, efficient marketplace deserves a section of the New Marketing playbook.

Related articles

3 Interesting Content Partners: NewsCred, Percolate and Skyword

Scoopshot scoops $3.9m to crowdsource news photography via 350,000 global users

On-Demand Photography Marketplace Scoopshot Snaps $3.9 Million Series A

Government Leads in Crowdsourcing “Massive Awesomeness”

How is the US government using social and digital media and data to bring value to the people? Too often criticized for bureaucratic sluggishness and cross-interest paralysis, the US government is doing some surprising things to innovate. Just look at the Health Data Initiative (HDI), a public-private initiative whose founding membership includes the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).   

Todd Park, the infectious (in a good way) US Chief Technology Officer, recently kicked off the Health Datapalooza in Washington DC. It’s one manifestation of the HDI, “the public-private collaboration that encourages innovators to utilize health data to develop applications that raise awareness of health system performance and spark community action to improve health.” The Health Datapalooza is all about opening up data and hosting crowdsourcing efforts that inspire the best and brightest to make use of that data. The DC-based event has inspired other health data, “hackathon” crowdsourcing events across the country.

Check out the Cajun Code Fest held in Louisiana. It brought 300 coders together to wrestle with code sets from the government that included:

• SCHOOL NUTRITION DIETARY ASSESSMENT STUDY
• BEHAVIORAL RISK FACTOR SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
• NATIONAL SURVEY OF CHILDREN'S HEALTH
• FOOD ENVIRONMENT ATLAS

Among other issues, they rallied their brainpower to crunch data towards useful solutions to childhood obesity. Check out their Web site and browse through the descriptions of the 37 datasets like those mentioned above. Even a layman (non-coder; non-data junkie) can start to imagine some of the possibilities if we could just bash some of this data together to extract insight and utility.

The Fanboy of Health Data

Todd Park is a force to be reckoned with. Just watch his introductory speech to the 2012 Health Datapalooza. A self-avowed  “fanboy of health data,” his brightness and enthusiasm is just what is needed to inspire 1600 entrepreneurs to convene for two days and lay the foundation for innovation that uses government data in creative and useful ways.

His proof point for opening up data or as Thomas Goetz, Executive Editor of Wired Magazine, called it converting ‘latent data into powerful, actionable data’, is the opening of weather and subsequently GPS data. Those moves created $90b of “massive awesomeness.” That’s innovation creating jobs, better outcomes for farmers and others who rely on weather, and just a ton of entrepreneurship (think Weather Channel, think Google Maps).

 “Awesome” is clearly Todd's favorite word. Hearing someone so effusive and passionate speak from a government pulpit is a breath of fresh air. He seems to have grabbed onto a behavior made popular in Silicon Valley in the private sector and figured out a way to elevate it to public-service-meets-the-next-wave-of-entrepreneurs.  I hope other governments around the world pay attention to this model and try to apply it to solve the big thorny issues.  

If you want to get a sense of some of the emerging solutions that were highlighted during the event, Read David Maris’ article at Forbes.com. He covers off on the winners and some of the interesting highlights. The value of the event goes far beyond those that won.

I am particularly fond of data visualization as part of a behavior strategy. David highlights the team from Indiana University who “entered a mobile app that provides images and information about the overall health of the population of each state.  So calling up an image of Mississippi, pulls up an obesity-adjusted outline of a person with other health statistics, while the Colorado outline is noticeably thinner.”

Also, the winner, VaxNation from Baylor, Rice and University of Texas students is "an app designed to make it easier for people to keep up with their families’ immunizations"

Read more about Todd Parks' enthusiasm and leadership at Mashable. 

 

One of CMO's top concerns in teh private sector is how to manage - make use of - the flood of data now avaialble to them. Perhaps there is a lesson in these open inititaives or the technology hackathons that came before them. 

Bald Barbie Not Invented Here

Why do brands find it hard to respond to community requests? Recently, a grassroots effort started by Jane Bingham and Rebecca Sypin, each who lost daughters to cancer, manifested in the Facebook Page, Beautiful and Bald Barbie. They have earned 158K fans to date all rallied around the idea of motivating Mattel to create a bald Barbie for girls struggling from hair loss associated from cancer treatments and other situations. 

Four months later, Mattel has signaled that they will create and give away “a bald friend” of Barbie in 2012. This is after the Bratz doll line announced they are delivering a series of bald dolls this June. 

Deborah Weinstein over at the SocialCMO summarized the “we were going to do this anyhow” tone response from Mattel when they finally pulled the trigger, 

“This week – some four months later – Mattel finally stepped up to the plate and announced the creation of a Bald Barbie Friend of Barbie for distribution to children’s hospitals and charities in 2013. Company spokesman Alan Hilowitz was quick to point out that Mattel did NOT create the doll in response to the Facebook page, but rather because “they helped us realize how important this was for us to do.”

Hard to Surrender to the Community

As much as I share Deb Weinstein’s POV that Mattel missed a bigger opportunity to acknowledge the community discussion immediately, respond and finally pull the trigger to meet the clear demand, the fact that they did at all is probably progress for a traditional business like Mattel.  When companies like Threadless have an entire business model around crowdsourced and voted-on t-shirts, why is it so much harder for the Mattel’s of the world to just say, “wow, you guys are bringing up an awesome idea and we really want to make this happen…?”

The problem of ownership

Can you say legal, intellectual property(IP), and post-war industrial enterprise? Threadless is different. They are soliciting designs under a clear terms of service that protects all parties. They also weren’t born out of the culture of the fifties.  As much as Mattel may have wanted to rush with a positive response, their whole infrastructure has been designed to protect IP. An idea from an outside source suddenly puts them at risk. Who would own the doll suggested by two moms behind a Facebook page? Should they manufacture and sell it, are they at risk for ownership? Does that risk dilute the protections on the golden goose core Barbie line? 

 

The problem of management

And then there is the curse of the industrial age, creative company. Toy companies are creative businesses who are designed to deliver valuable ideas. Agencies are the same way. If it wasn’t created at Mattel then what the heck are all those employees doing in the design department? I know it’s not logical and we really aren’t talking about a creative breakthrough here (just look at the photo mock-ups people have made of Barbie with no hair – pretty simple, right). Still post-war, industrial-scale companies are where management became king. And management is meant to control and manage. Creative is meant to create. The impulse to reject outside thinking is pretty strong because that’s the way they roll. 

 

The problem of dialogue

Some companies have a hard time talking to people in anything but that highly-protected tone of the PR department. If there is one lesson that social media has taught brands it must be that learning how to have a conversation like a human being actually does matter to customers. Barbie’s Facebook page is largely about the character’s voice. Mattel’s page, on the other hand, is about engaging and natural as the accountants who come out at every Oscar Awards show to explain the judging procedures. 

It’s also where you see a doozy of “protect the IP at all costs” statement in their Info tab:

“As the world’s largest toy company, we receive thousands of product suggestions every year. Given this volume, it’s likely yours is the same or substantially similar to concepts we’ve already received or developed. While we appreciate hearing from our consumers, we rely on our large staff of designers for product ideas. Therefore, it’s our policy to not review any unsolicited concepts and we cannot retain your submission. We don’t assume any obligation in connection with your unsolicited concept. If you’d like to learn more about how to get into the toy business, you may wish to contact the Toy Industry Association at http://www.Toy-Tia.org.”

Part of the problem with Mattel’s response was how long it took. Four months is about 3 months and 29 days too long. They needn’t have assented right away. A simple “we hear you” and “we appreciate what you are all going through with your children and your love for Barbie…” would have started the ball rolling in the right direction. Part of the problem is the established tone of voice.

Perhaps Mattel still believes there is only one way to protect their position - the cardboard statement. So many other brands have found ways to talk like human beings without losing their commercial advantage. Could Mattel have done better? Certainly. I only hope they examine this situation with enough candor to see what the true opportunities for change are. 

Welcome to Social@Ogilvy!

(this post is also found in s similar form on our new Social@Ogilvy site)

The Social Imperative

Brands will spend between 17-18% of their total marcom spend on social media within 4 years. They will spend more on social business solutions. They are seeing value and expecting more every year. 

The key reason? 90% of us look to friends and family for the most trusted recommendations on products, service and issues. 70% of us count on consumer opinions online above traditional media. And it’s only going to grow. Millennials are three times more likely than Boomers to look for a social opinion on choices they make. 

The future is brand advocacy. And it cannot be faked, gamed, or outright ‘bought.’

There are only three ways to connect with and build a strong relationship with customers and stakeholders these days. 

1. Deliver highly relevant content or service. This could be advertising, media relations or what we call ‘owned’ content (including valuable services). Now it’s all highly targeted and tailored. No more 360 degree ‘onslaughts’ of interruptive advertising. Now our messages must be deemed highly relevant to our targets to earn their attention. Lets use the ‘10 degrees’ that matter. Useful content to run a sustainable business from DuPont. Better ways to use member ‘points’ from American Express. 
2. Be discoverable in search. When people search Google, Baidu or Yandex, brands need to be there for all the topics that intersect between a person’s intent and where the brand can add some value. Ford on fuel efficiency. Hellmann’s on Real Food recipes. 
3. Earn our way into their ‘social graph.’  To succeed in social media, we must become genuinely valuable to the people we serve and earn their attention, their advocacy and their business.   Inviting people as VIPs into the launch of the new Ford Explorer in Facebook. Sparking a social conversation about the dreams of the next generation of Chinese from Johnnie Walker. Helping Hong Kong parents celebrate their baby pictures in a much bigger way from Huggies.

How we form opinions about products, services and issues is constantly changing. It’s imperative that we make social a new way we do everything.

What is Social@Ogilvy? 

Social@Ogilvy is the global, cross-discipline team of social experts from across all of Ogilvy’s businesses delivering social solutions to all parts of our clients’ business. This is new. This is bigger than before. We have been designing and executing social media marketing and communications programs for 7+ years as 360 Digital Influence – a specialty practice born out of Ogilvy Public Relations. We quickly grew to deliver social solutions for all sorts of marketing and communications clients. 

Now we have grown into Social@Ogilvy. We are a true global network with a common approach. 

Integrated Social Media Matters More 

The whole PR vs. marketing battle is moot. Social media will inform every discipline and deliver business value for the foreseeable future. Social media as a standalone specialty doesn’t make sense. All the power and potential in social based solutions comes to life when you integrate it into marcom and other functions. 

We design integrated social solutions that combine deep disciplines like crm, public relations and shopper marketing and rooted in what drives behavior.  We plan around owned, earned and paid media working together for a compound effect and at its heart our work is ‘social by design’ – phrase used now by Facebook but that captures what we do quite well. 

A Global Shift

We do believe there’s a new customer and stakeholder journey defined by the increasing impact our networks have on purchase decision and our behaviors. How we buy, vote, and form opinions has changed. We tap into our 130 friends (the Facebook average) to discover, consider, compare, decide and rave about products, services and issues.

This shift is happening in one way or another all over the world. Growth markets like China, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey will define the next episode of social media use. They are all growing their social network use and outpacing western markets including the US. That’s why we have grown the world’s largest global team delivering solutions relevant in each local market.  

And it’s more than just marketing, we design social business solutions that use the collaboration and advocacy strengths of social media to drive value internally and in customer relationships while at the same time managing risk. 

 

Join Us

We will be participating or hosting 23 events in and outside of Social Media Week this week in NYC, London and Hong Kong not to mention a dozen other markets. Join us as we launch this new ambitious business. It's been a wild ride to get to this point and we would love to see you. You can find out more at our new Social@Ogilvy site.

Bringing Play and Games IRL for P&G Detergent

 

An example of how to use game mechanics and connect Facebook experience with in real life (IRL) experience. This is from Sweden and as such hard to see how much of an impact it had. But it's interesting and up there with Chalkbot (the mechanics not the emotion) and the retro-interest we have in industrial robits (see the Yotel).  A small 'stain' on the experience is the horrible load times of the Facebook app.  It is accessing a live webcam so, perhaps, it's unavoidable. 

legitimate questions: 

• How could they have created even more online shared content?
• Is the 'game' (point and shoot industrial robot 'juice') too male a genre or is it of broad interest?  
• How do I get to their Facebook wall? If I am now engaged with the brand cause I 'liked' the page and what they did, how can I interact with them more? 

Will Data, the Crowd or Personal Guides Deliver the Golden Age of Travel?

Is it just me or is the social Web alive with travel innovation? This coming from a guy who diligently fed data into Dopplr for years without any apparent pay-off. So, I am a bit of a sucker for anything to do with travel. Still, I think there is reason for even more critical folks to be encouraged, excited even, about what is coming in travel innovation. 

A month ago, I met the CEO of Jetsetter when we both spoke at the Digital CMO Summit. That day, he introduced the new Jetsetter iPad app which is a beautiful gem. I love all of the Gilt group deal offerings. They are so not-Groupon. Essentially, the app takes a great idea and makes it look and navigate terrifically. It doesn't change it. That's where the personal guides come in.

Personal Guides

It's probably more accurate to call this new category of service 'personalized guides." Drew Patterson revealed that Jetsetter was starting a service for a fee where travelers could query Jetsetter experts from around the world for personalized itineraries in certain locations. Of course I lost my magic postcard which held my invitation to take advantage of that service. Still, I love the idea. 

Now you can do same through Fortnighter. For somewhere between $100-$250 you can get somewhat personalized recommendations from hotels to restaurants to activities. The service only lets you personalize so much. And it caters to the single or couples traveler. That leaves me and my family a wee bit left out. Still, I like the notion of concierge-like service and I believe in the premise - if I am going to invest a chunk of money and time to go to Istanbul with my family (true - going this July), then I would be willing for some local guidance on what to do there that deviates from the beaten tourist path while letting us find the really good pizza in town.

Still another example is really not an example fo a social enablement. Its more an example of how niche travel may find an audience. Political Tours offers travel itineraries around political history. A tour focused on Turkey Elections 2011 would include really cool events like this one:

"Day 3 Turkish foreign policy – moving eastward? A panel discussion with leading Turkish commentators. Lunch at Imroz in Nevizade with an introduction to the Tarlabasi district: urban projects and gentrification. Guided Walk through Tarlabasi with Constanze Leitsch, a migration expert. Visit to Kürt Kav, a Kurdish foundation, a Greek Church with Father Dositeos. Meetings with local artisans. Dinner with NGO activists"

I love this experiential approach to travel and wish I could "sample" it while there. My family would not appreciate a full immersive, multi-day focus on politics. Nor would they agree to me slithering off to do this on my own. 

The Crowd

While still people-powered, another way to go is Wizard Istanbul (thanks, as always, to Springwise) The service operated by the Culture and Tourism Ministry of Turkey, lets me ask a question via Twitter and Facebook and someone - presumably another traveler, resident or the Wizard, him/herself will answer. I submitted a couple of questions around whirling dervish ceremonies/performances and pizza. We will see what the crowd comes back with.

The service recruits writers willing to answer the questions. This is a terrific service from a forward-thinking ministry. I suppose it's possible that the service will get overrun by spammers or folks with commercial interests (disappointing to realize that most hotel concierges make recommendations for places that kickback a fee). For now, I prefer to keep my naive hat on and will plan on using the service before and while I am there.

Data

Marketers get frothy just thinking about how new access to data can deliver value for customers and brands. I remember a financial services company had an ambition to let member's access aggregate member data on the restaurants they most frequented - "X  members prefer Le Cirque over the Jockey Club." It fell apart when data revealed that most members went to McDonald's.

I tend to like to think of myself as the travel who shuns the usual touristy destinations (yes, same guy who asked about Whirling Dervishes in Istanbul). Aggregate data scares me as it suggests using the great median as a guide. 

 
But there are exceptions. These maps from Eric Fisher (and collected here on the Dohop blog - thanks to Datamining) plot out photographs from Flickr on top of city maps. Blue dots are from locals and the red dots are pix taken by visitors. This one is from Sydney where I just returned from. 

Here's why this particular data is helpful. We take pictures of memorable or remarkable scenes. Sometimes this is highly personal. Other times what I find photo-worthy, you will too. These maps tell me what others have felt worth a photo - something they found remarkable or memorable. As a traveler, I could use that. Imagine taking this data and mapping other data about the images (thumbnails or tags?) or from another source like FourSquare. Could we come up with maps of remarkable moments and vistas that others could tap into easily?

 

I tend to think that the more personal, human-powered services offer the most cool innovations currently. But data is on its way. We just cant forget that cool data can only get you so far. One must have a business model to support the services rendered, as well.