Last month, a story on Ad Age reported only 5% of online Americans use location apps like foursquare. With many location-based services now automated (think Weather Channel pulling up your local forecast without entering your zip code), a quick survey around the office showed that at least 76% of us are using location apps. Apparently our definition is a bit broader as we heard back on a whole lot of apps. The following stats and recommendations are taken from the location app users in our office – enjoy!
Most Used Location Apps: 58% Foursquare 58% Instagram 37% Yelp 37% Path 26% Facebook Places 26% Groupon Places We're Checking Into: 68% Bars/Clubs/Music Venues 58% New Cities/On Vacation 58% Restaurants 47% Cafes/Coffee Shops 37% Sporting Venues 32% Parks/Bike Paths/Outdoor Spots Top Motivations For Using Location Apps: 53% Promote Locations 47% To Share with Friends 42% Sync Photos with Location 37% Discounts/Coupons 37% To Track Distance/Record Spots 32% Receive Badges
Our Recommendations: “With Path, the simple, fluid layout makes it a joy to use and it also lets you know who sees what you post and who is looking at your Path. Posts you make can also be posted to your Tumblr, foursquare, Twitter and Facebook if desired.” -Tom Flaherty, Experience Designer
"I like Untappd, since I’m a beer geek. I also think part of the reason is that since Untappd is more a niche social network with a pretty specific audience (craft beer lovers), there is a little more sense of community versus blasting it out to random people that may not have as common of interests.” -Evan Johnston, Experience Engineer"I like EveryTrail because I'm always looking to go on an adventure that only locals know about. EveryTrail's community is full of outdoorsmen with a passion for telling stories about their experiences.” -Brent Slone, Digital Strategist “I've been using Oink as opposed to Instagram recently, also a location-based app. I was using Instagram to snapshot what I was eating, or a sunset every now and again. Oink is more of an Instagram mixed with Yelp – I dig it.” -Chris Robertson, Senior Experience Designer*Images from http://notlion.github.com/streetview-stereographic/
Today, the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) announced its new 2012 Board of Directors. Current SoDA members elected the new leadership team who will define the organization’s strategic imperatives and guide SoDA throughout the year. The new SoDA Board of Directors is comprised of the following individuals: Daniel Conner, CEO, StruckAxiom DJ Edgerton, CEO, Zemoga Rebecca Flavin, CEO, EffectiveUI Andrew Howlett, CEO, Rain Patrick Gardner, Co-founder & CEO, Perfect Fools Steve Glauberman, CEO, Enlighten Tony Quin, CEO & Founder, IQ Joe Olsen (Alternate), CEO, PhenomblueCongratulations to all those elected, particularly our CEO Joe Olsen!
Throughout the last couple weeks, our team has been competing in a Jeopardy Tournament to add to our expansive knowledge of the industry and to continue our growth as industry experts. On Friday, our LA team was in the Omaha office (for Friday night’s Phenomblue Holiday Party) so we held our final round to determine a winner – in first place, Kate Richling (Marketing Director) and in a very close second, Megan Moore (QA Specialist).
Digital Strategist Brent Slone returned this week from the iMedia Agency Summit in Scottsdale, Ariz. At the summit, an agency-only day allowed for guests to share best practices and discuss issues that were specific to agencies themselves. Phenomblue was also nominated in two categories for the iMedia Agency Awards: Agency of the Year and Most Innovative Agency Website.
To kick off the agency-only meeting, each attendee was asked to name their favorite app, or website. In lieu of doing another summit recap post, we've posted the list of favorited destinations for you to check out:
Written by James Thill, Engagement Director, Phenomblue LA
Spring-cleaning will come early next year for Google Analytics. In January 2012, Google will remove its old version of Analytics to focus on its new, and improved, analytic tools for users. We all know it can be challenging at times to let go of the old – but with the ability to customize up to 20 dashboards specific to your companies needs, you’ll be able to quickly and effectively measure the success of online initiatives. Have you spent countless hours mining through data to better understand what, when, why and how conversions happen? I’m guessing I’m not alone here. We’re excited to continue creating engaging experiences while supporting our partners with the very best Google has to offer. Our team is able to measure how successfully campaigns are performing in order to reevaluate and adapt if necessary. We utilize Google tools to motivate continued research; for example, we can see where things are happenings and then take a closer look to diagnose the change. We examine other analytics, such as sentiment, to put the data in context. Measurements come in all shapes and sizes. The beauty of the new system is that it allows different users to measure different initiatives across their brand’s online presence. If your CEO or CMO only has a short amount of time to review data on a daily basis you can setup a dashboard to include mobile device info, total visits, traffic source, etc. Or each of your departments could set up its own dashboard to track related stats. If you have a variety of creative in place and need to track specifically your SEO, paid search or email marketing campaigns, you can segment those out as well. Interactive agencies, like ours, are becoming more and more calculated in their approach with real time data, site navigation and event goal flow reports. Similar to going to the doctor, it can be a challenge to provide a diagnostic without the necessary research. Analytic tools allow us the opportunity to ensure that we can track, analyze and quickly determine if and when a user is abandoning an experience. All in all, as interactive advertising continues to advance, the effectiveness of experiences we create is strengthened because of tools like these.
Just in time for the holidays, some of our Phenomblue-ers are embarking on the One Hundred Push Up Challenge. For six weeks, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we’ll be doing push ups – more push ups each day. After the last week of workouts, there will be a final challenge to see who can do 100 push ups in the shortest amount of time.
Check out our competitors: Brandon Bone Kaylin Brabec Nabile Coulibaly Sara Hoffman Evan Johnston Brian Kiel Jason McEvoy Ryan Means Ryan Phelan Chris Robertson Brent Slone Derek Van Horne Jimm Wagner Sam Wilken Learn more about the One Hundred Push Up Challenge on the official website.
With the increasing ubiquity of mobile devices, mobile apps are becoming extremely effective tools for both marketing and productivity. To help overcome the vast array of mobile devices, platforms and form factors, there are a few frameworks which allow developers to build hybrid applications which can run on multiple platforms. This can reduce the cost of building a multi-platform app by tens of thousands of dollars! Hybrid apps are named as such because they're written in a third-party programming language which at compile time is either cross-compiled to native code or encapsulated in a web view wrapper. If the wrapper solution is used, the content will run in a browser type environment and the wrapper will act as an intermediary, translating instructions that you've written into a form which the device can understand. Currently there are three primary application frameworks available for developing hybrid mobile apps: Appcelerator Titanium and PhoneGap (both Javascript-based), as well as Adobe AIR (which is Actionscript-based). Appcelerator and AIR are complete packaging solutions with their own development IDE, whereas PhoneGap is often used in tandem with Apple's xCode and another Javascript framework such as jQuery Mobile or Sencha Touch. PhoneGap utilizes the aforementioned "wrapper" method whilst Appcelerator and AIR compile your code to whichever native language is required for the destination device (Objectiv e-C for iOS, Java for Android, etc). A Word of Warning: There is no magic bullet for cross-platform mobile development. The best approach is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each framework, and consider all options for each application that you build. Select the one that best suits your app's unique needs -- in some cases the best solution will still be to build separate native apps. As mentioned before, the upside of hybrid apps is that they take significantly less time to develop and it's much easier to port your app over to a different device operating system. The downside is that since your original code isn't native, performance can be impacted. In addition, if you want your app to interface with device-level events like I/O and data, you're dependent on the framework developer to include said access if even possible. How This Works in Action: For a recent project, we wanted to create an iPad app consisting of a slideshow and a form which submits contact info to a remote CRM. We didn't need device-level access to any of the sensor or camera data, and the functionality was simple – a perfect match for the capabilities of HTML5 – so we decided to use PhoneGap and go hybrid. Our initial choice for development in this project was a PhoneGap/jQuery Mobile pairing. jQuery Mobile inherits its syntax from its huskier desktop brother and Adobe's most recent Dreamweaver CS5.5 release comes with PhoneGap and jQuery Mobile support baked-in. We were able to quickly assemble a prototype within a day or two and had the app up and running on an in-house development tablet. Unfortunately while testing, we discovered an edge-case bug which caused slideshow transitions to be plagued with a disturbing visual stutter. The bug was visually jarring and unacceptable for a product that you hold in your hands and touch. Luckily, having gone the hybrid route we had other options. The app had been written in Javascript and we were able to quickly swap out one mobile framework (jQuery Mobile) for another (Sencha Touch) and be back up and running with a minimal amount of code refactoring. Once the move to the alternate framework was complete, slideshow transitions were smooth as butter, and we could show/hide the form without any impact on slideshow performance. In the end going the hybrid route gave us the ability to easily prototype and test functionality, uncover and circumvent potential issues early on in the process. Using the information gleaned, PhoneGap itself gave us the flexibility to adapt our toolset midstream. The Take Away: Native apps have their use but as hybrid app authoring tools mature, the barrier to entry into the mobile app segment becomes lower, as does the cost of developing applications that can reach upwards of 80-90% of mobile users. We recommend that mobile developers keep their tool belts well stocked with solutions like PhoneGap, Appcelerator Titanium and Adobe AIR. The time you save on development will allow you to focus on the part that really matters: the user experience. If you're curious to hear more thoughts and experiences about the move to Sencha Touch, Brian Kiel (who wrote this post) will have a more tech-oriented rundown of likes, dislikes, tips and tricks available soon on his blog.
The finalists for the iMedia Agency Awards have been chosen and Phenomblue has been nominated in two categories: Agency of the Year and Most Innovative Agency Website.
The iMedia Agency Awards is a premier industry awards show dedicated exclusively to recognizing the key role of agencies in advancing digital marketing. The winners will be announced at the upcoming iMedia Agency Summit in Scottsdale, Ariz., December 4-7.
Our online book has had a couple new additions during the last couple weeks. Here are some details on what we’ve been working on:
We recently provided asset management and development on a microsite for Playtex Sport's Unstoppable Trip to Nationals Contest. High school cheer/dance teams have been visiting the site, entering the contest by recording cheers or dance sequences to the Unstoppable sound track provided on the site. Videos are easily sharable across Facebook, Twitter and email, helping spread awareness of the competition and getting more votes for the teams. With the contest still open for a couple more weeks, 20,000 votes have already been cast! Another project was to assist with the global rebrand of Gogo by creating and refreshing videos for the brand. Gogo allows airline passengers with laptops and other Wi-Fi enabled devices to be online while flying. We did the illustration, animation and sound editing for a variety of videos that Gogo uses online and at presentations, tradeshows, etc. For more experiences, visit the Phenomblue book.
Recently, Kt McBratney, our production director, video conferenced through Skype with a public relations class at Ball State University. She talked about Phenomblue, outlining her job responsibilities of ensuring that budgets and timelines are met, while keeping clients, end users and our team happy. When asked about her day-to-day, Kt explained that there is no typical day, but communication and organization are two very consistent factors. Just like her position, she elaborated that Phenomblue has no typical project either – we work on everything from Facebook apps to complete brand overhauls. Students were interested in hearing what Kt uses from her college experience in the real world today. She talked about key concepts and skills she learned in college that are still useful. She also learned the importance of “sticking out.” Being good is good, being great is great, but thousands can be described by those two adjectives. She encouraged students to keep pushing themselves and make their work, effort and talent stand out among the rest. Many of the questions asked were also about hiring. Kt provided her suggestions for getting hired after college, from basic tips like creating an online portfolio to being able to elaborate on social media measurement tactics or explain how meaningful a good user experience can be for a marketing campaign. The students also discussed with Kt how they keep up on trends, and what resources they’re using to track trends online. Many of the students are on Twitter and were interested in hearing Kt’s perspective on QR codes and Google+. Afterwards, Kt recapped why it’s important to do these types of talks:
“I see a lack of interactive and digital education in many advertising and public relations programs today. Students need to see this part of the industry because it’s quickly growing. They also should be exposed to positions like producer or user experience roles that may not be a part of their current curriculums.”
