You have to watch it on Youtube to even have a chance, and then only if you pause it *just* right. And where does it take you? A site that's only semi-mobile friendly!

It’s rare that I eat out, and one of those occasions recently found me at Buffalo Wild Wings.  If you’ve ever been there you know its loud and animated with 427 televisions all tuned to some sports program or one of those closed circuit trivia games. Try as you might you can’t help but glance up at the screens from time to time (I don’t know why I bothered trying, either).

The intense shredding of renowned surfer Dusty Payne caught my attention, so I paused from my water-no-ice-no-lemon and nachos to watch. It was obviously a commercial, but it was captivating just the same. Graphics were cut in between video of Dusty ripping the waves, appearing for microseconds – things like Volcom’s logo, website, Dusty’s name, board shorts, and a QR code. Wait, what? A QR code?

QR Code Fail

Okay, the ad is striking, I admit. It’s has some power. But placing a QR code in a 30-second ad and showing it for only microseconds…that’s a little perplexing. Sure, you might have your smartphone sitting on the arm of your lazy-boy recliner as you mindlessly consume electronic entertainment, but you certainly aren’t sitting at the ready waiting for a barcode to pop up, right? I mean, it takes half the commercial to load up your barcode scanner app! “Oh look a QR code – wait – hold on let me pull up the app…ok it’s loading…loading, wait wait! Crap!

If you’re thinking of doing something similar in your next television commercial, consider the user and how they might respond to seeing a 2D code. Recognize that while a lot of new technology is fast and convenient, it isn’t that fast and it isn’t always convenient.

Yes, new technology is sexy and you want to be one of the first to use it in exciting new ways. But exciting and new isn’t always effective. Users of mobile devices are generally on the go, a little too busy or engaged to be disrupted by ill-conceived and irrelevant marketing. Flashing a QR code at them on a TV screen is like putting up an electronic billboard in the middle of a desert.

QR Code Win

Tesco Home Plus of Korea understands mobile users. They realized, for this person, the weekly task of grocery-go-getting was time consuming and sometimes difficult to accomplish in a hurry. So they brought the grocery store to where their customers might have some downtime – the subway.

Tesco created a virtual grocery store on the subway walls, each item bearing a QR code allowing customers to shop while they waited. Tesco did their homework. First they studied their customers’ habits, then identified a problem the customer faced on a weekly basis, and finally devised and implemented a solution to their customers’ problem, ultimately increasing sales.

QR codes can be a great tool when used correctly. The next time you are at a creative meeting, don’t be afraid to suggest using them. Just be sure to use them in a way that engages people rather than just riding the novelty wave as Volcom did.

The Fail and Win of QR Codes is a post from: RSA Blog

There are all sorts of tools that you can use to help your start-up, small business or established corporation grow. Whether you want to improve communication with your employees or provide a better buying experience for your clients and customers, there is probably a tool for that.

It’s no secret, and you’ve probably heard it before – we live in an information age. There are always new gadgets coming out and it can be difficult to keep your business on top of the latest trends. We’re here to help!

These are a few tools that I have found most successful for social and business communications.

1. Skype: This application lets you easily connect with people that you would otherwise never see. Maybe you have a client that lives across the state. Use this tool to improve relations with customers, co-workers and even your distant relatives and family members. Most laptops already come with a built-in webcam and if your desktop computer doesn’t have one they can be purchased for less than $30.
2. Dropbox: If your business doesn’t already have an internal file sharing program you should give Dropbox a try. This application is free to download and super easy to use. You can create folders for different projects and share them with select people. The more you spend, the more storage space you will get. Try out the free version and you will get 2 GB storage space. If you like the program you can upgrade to the 50 or 100 GB plan.
3. Square: A relatively new product, Square is a miniature credit card reader that plugs into the headphone outlet of your iPod, iPhone, iPad, Droid or whatever smart device you have. The device is free and adding your personal or business bank account is easy. Now you can accept payments wherever you are, not limited by cash or check-only purchases. The cost of renting a standard counter-top card reader is expensive and takes up a lot of space. With Square, you can save money and have the option of mobility when going to trade shows and business meetings.

I would talk about Facebook, Twitter and other social media but by now I’m sure you already know the value of those tools.

Don’t be afraid to try something new. The tools listed above and many others like it are proven time-savers and moneymakers. You can maximize efficiency, gain new business, be social and have fun while doing it.

Tools to make your business blossom is a post from: RSA Blog

Scanning a QR Code with a smartphone

I first crossed paths with a QR code a couple of years ago. I was in the Denver International Airport, with a long wait ahead before my flight to Rapid City. Displayed at a huge size on a 1stBank billboard, and looking more like modern art than advertising, a beautiful blue QR code was accompanied by an invitation to get free books and Sudoku puzzles. Just what I wanted! Just what I needed!

But with no concept of how to proceed…no free reading materials for me.

By now you’ve probably seen QR codes.  They’re increasingly common these days – on billboards, in magazines, at websites, in malls and stores. With that eye-catching appearance, they look creative and artsy, but they originated for a more mundane purpose: to improve the scanning and tracking of inventory.

Japanese company DensoWave came up with QR codes (also known as 2D codes) as an improvement over bar codes. The more complex pattern can store more information for scanners to read. From there, QR codes quickly made their way into the advertising arena in Asia, riding the growing wave of smartphones with scanning capabilities. They’ve been slower to take hold here in the U.S. but with the smartphone market still growing swiftly, it’s likely you’ll continue to see more of them.

QR Codes and You

So let’s back up a step – what did I need to do in Denver to get free books and puzzles? I needed a smartphone with a camera and a bar code scanner.

Once you have a smartphone, you can download a bar code scanner app for free. Use the camera in your phone to scan a QR code, and the code’s message will be revealed by the QR reader. It’s usually a website URL, phone number, or a short text message. You might be directed to videos, coupons, maps or other kinds of information.

Advertising with QR codes has its advantages and its drawbacks. On the plus side, it’s inexpensive, cutting-edge, gets attention, and allows the quick communication of a significant amount of information. Museums, parks and libraries are using QR codes to provide detailed directional information. Rock bands have used them on their promotional materials, even on their clothing, to help connect their fans with their music. Creating your QR code is easy – there are many free QR code generators on the internet.

Drawback of QR Codes

The drawback, of course, is that there are still a significant number of people who will be as incapable of reading your QR code advertisement as I was of getting free Sudoku in Denver. You can’t rely on it alone to reach your entire audience. But with more and more people getting smartphones, QR codes should grow in popularity.

If you plan your campaign carefully and understand the audience you are going to reach, it might be a perfect time to use QR codes. It’s new enough to still have an element of novelty, and established enough to have a user base that will engage with it. RSA can help you with a creative QR code strategy.

It worked for 1stBank – their billboard campaign at DIA resulted in 25,000 scans of their QR codes, and won them an OBIE award for excellence in advertising.

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Photo courtesy of preetamrai

QR Codes…the medium is the message is a post from: RSA Blog

Smart Phones

Mobile devices are becoming more and more popular, and the mobile web is an alluring place for web surfers, offering all kinds of communications capabilities on the go. Yet it’s still a very new arena for many people, especially here in South Dakota.

The capabilities of mobile phones and devices now make mobile a serious contender to traditional website access. In the next few years this technology is predicted to surpass the amount of internet users currently utilizing desktop computers.

Why should I create a mobile website?

There are limitations to mobile web such as limited screen space & slower connections speeds. To date, a large amount of mobile web users are attempting to get to vital information about companies and topics quickly, but they can run into problems because many websites are not ready for mobile viewing.

A traditional website won’t always work. Having all the content from your website show up on a mobile device may frustrate the visitor, making their experience slow and hard to navigate. A little forethought can help reduce frustration.

Is mobile browsing really that popular?

Consider the following:

• Cell phones are in the hands of 5 billion people worldwide and over 290,000 in the United States.
• Over 93% of U.S. adults own a cell phone and the demand for mobile access to the Internet has skyrocketed with experts predicting broadband subscriptions surpassing 1 billion around the world this year.
• One third of those who do not own a cell phone live in households where someone else has a cell phone.
• 20% of all U.S. households are now “mobile-only.”
• More adults have a cell phone than have an iPod or mp3 player.
• As of July 2010, 23% of mobile phone owners have accessed a social network via a mobile phone, 20% have used a phone to watch a video and 11% have made a charitable donation by text message.
• 11% of mobile phone owners make purchases through their phones.

Now the question should be, “do I want my business to be found and easily accessed on the mobile web?” I would think the answer is yes!

Based on the work we’ve done for clients getting their websites mobile ready, I can say this is an increasingly popular trend, and a cost-effective way to reach web users in a whole new way. If you want to create a mobile website, give us a call!

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Photo courtesy of Robert Bejil Photography

Why Create A Mobile Website? is a post from: RSA Blog

check in anywhere

Shades of The Island of Dr. Moreau! (hint: Google H.G. Wells)  Modern-day mad scientists (let’s call them “software developers”) have been merging social networking concepts with a range of other technologies and rolling out new hybrid beasts that could eventually change your marketing and public relations strategies.

One that we’re keeping a close eye on here is a species known as “location based social networking” (LBSN) – combining short message service (SMS), aspects of gaming, smartphone technologies and GPS capabilities.

Location-based Race

A number of competitors are active in this marketplace. You might have heard of or use Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook Places, or forerunner Brightkite – free  services that allow users to “check in” and announce their location to others through an app downloaded to their phone or via SMS text message. Users can earn rewards for exploring new places and doing interesting new things, and can leave tips, reviews and recommendations for others who later check in.

Early on, some of these services were available only in the largest metropolitan markets around the world.  Successes there have caused them to open access to locations everywhere. They’re becoming more business-focused as well, seeing the huge potential to match businesses eager for customers with nearby LBSN members in the process of choosing their next stop.

Why you should care

Certainly, any business that would like to grow its reputation as a local hotspot or mustn’t-miss tourist destination can immediately see the possibilities here. Imagine a visitor to Rapid City relaxing in their hotel room and using Foursquare through their iPhone (or Droid or Blackberry) to see if people in their network have recommendations for restaurants or activities, and to look for discounts and incentives from places nearby.

And Foursquare might indeed be the one they’ll be using. Business buzz is that Foursquare is currently best positioned to break out of the pack and follow the Facebook and Twitter trajectory to “new household word” status.

Foursquare users earn points for checking in at locations and the person with the most points attached to a particular venue becomes its “mayor” – which affords them bragging rights and sometimes nifty rewards. Users can also find and unlock “badges” earned by checking in at various locations or performing certain tasks.

This is one of the fun aspects of the network and an ongoing incentive to stay engaged with Foursquare. In October of this year, astronaut Doug Wheelock unlocked the NASA Explorer badge by checking into Foursquare from the International Space Station. Back here on earth, you’ll see references to it popping up in a number of locations — like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal websites, and your local Rapid City Walgreens.

So if you get a new smartphone, download a LBSN app and give it a try.  If you want to promote your business this way, give us a call.

(and BTW — if your brother-in-law soon smugly confides that Foursquare could just be the next Twitter – you can now yawn and say . . . “oh yeah, I already heard that.”)

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Photo courtesy of teamstickergiant

LBSN – What it is and why you should care is a post from: RSA Blog

[This guest post from Darcy Norfolk at Adworkshop was originally posted on the Alliance of Marketing Communications Agencies blog.]

In this age of web-enabled Smart phones and other “Smart” devices that are flooding the market, we here at Adworkshop have noticed that the number of “apps” (applications) and mobile sites being downloaded is skyrocketing.  As a matter of fact, our advertising agency in upstate New York came across an eMarketer report on a recent survey conducted by Adobe which found that most mobile users prefer to get their content from mobile websites rather than mobile applications. The only categories that showed a higher mobile application download preference were games, music and social media.

It seems to us that the same businesses that were saying a year ago “we need a mobile site!” are now starting to think “we need an app!”, but may not be aware of the details involved in developing either one.  Apps are generally easy to download, but research by Pinch Media recently revealed that unless the app is a game, “less than 5 percent of downloaded apps continue to be used 20 days after being downloaded.”  That means that the life cycle of an app has run its course in under three weeks, which loosely translates to a wasted investment.

Adobe also found this to be true. Two thirds of the surveyed group preferred to download an app for a game rather than browse a mobile website for one. eMarketer’s report noted that “while consumers may use the mobile web more often, the immersive nature of apps allows them to play just as large a role in marketing communications.”

Mobile web development costs are lower (no need to develop an app for different platforms such as iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc. etc. etc.), it’s much easier for a site to be found in search engines, and consumers seem to prefer using the familiar format of a mobile website for sourcing content. However, our website design team has noticed that the performance of an app is quite high compared to some mobile sites because the code runs locally on the user’s device.

Even so, many signs seem to point toward mobile web.  Besides the lower development costs, there are no “additional costs” tacked on, such as entry costs, which some app stores charge with each upgrade.  Plus, there’s no need to share any sales revenues as a result of someone using a mobile website (app stores can take up to 30 percent of your revenue!).  Anyone on the web has access to your mobile site, but with an app, you rely on the app stores’ policies and procedures on how many users can download and install the app.

Some marketing professionals feel that apps are temporary; others feel they are here to stay. There are conflicting opinions all over the place.

We here at Adworkshop encourage you to do some research or consult a marketing agency when deciding if now is the time to go mobile with either an app or mobile web.

Mobile Website vs. Mobile Applications is a post from: RSA Blog

We are excited to announce the winners of our first Good Ad, Bad Ad Facebook contest! Congrats to Jackie and Gina, who posted ads deemed the best and worst of the bunch by our esteemed panel of judges (our Search Engine Marketing department, clearly).

Good Ad: Jackie won the prize with the latest commercial in the “Search Overload” campaign from Bing:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We can relate – and now our office is jamming out to Freak Nasty’s “Da Dip.”

Bad Ad: Gina caught our attention with something very, very bad to win the Bad Ad prize:

Okay, it’s not exactly an ad, but close enough. Read more about this British Airways faux pas,  which appeared in an internal staff magazine with an article about mobile boarding. Whether it was a mistake or a prank gone awry, that’s one heck of a PR mess.

Congrats again to our winners, and thanks to everyone for playing. Be on the lookout for more contests in the future!

And the winners are… is a post from: RSA Blog

...since sliced bread.

Q: I get a lot of clients asking me a number of variations of this question: “What’s the Next Big Thing?”

This is good! They’re interested, they’re anxious – they observed the boom of social media and they want to get in on the ground floor of whatever new craze comes along.

A: So here is the answer: it doesn’t matter. The corollary is that no one really knows for sure. Yes, you can speculate all day long – and people have – but the reality is no one knew Twitter was the Next Big Thing until it was.

Well I can tell you the Next Big Thing is data and communication implants, but it’s nothing more than wild speculation. Also, scary.

Among people who are reluctant to get involved in the web, social media, SEM, and mobile marketing, I get the sense they think they’ve already missed the boat, and so they ignore it. They’re waiting around for the Next Big Thing, instead.

Well yeah, you’re missing the boat. But guess what: Das Boot is a ferry – there’s always another chance to hop on and join the party on the other side. Stop waiting around for the Next Big Thing, because if you’re not already involved in This Big Thing, chances are you’ll completely miss the next one.

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Photo courtesy of cogdog

The Next Big Thing is a post from: RSA Blog

While driving through town on your way to work, you notice a billboard advertising a new coffee shop somewhere in the city. In great need of morning blend, but passing the sign too quickly to write down the web address, you seize the next chance you get to pull out your phone and do a mobile web search for the coffee shop.

Within the search results you not only get a link to Google maps for directions, but a link to the coffee shop’s site. Upon entering their website you are automatically eligible for a mobile discount: a free latte, which is redeemable at the register by simply showing the mobile coupon code you will receive in a text message.

Does your website work for mobile?

Does this scenario seem a little crazy or far-fetched to you? Well, it is more realistic than you might think. In fact, it’s already happening.

Mobile Marketing Today

Mobile websites are not only used as a quick way to find information, but they have become yet another avenue for marketing campaigns.

Capturing the attention of multiple generations and target demographics, mobile marketing is an intricate and interesting venture that effectively ties into other marketing efforts.

Mobile marketing can be used to help establish brand awareness through many different outlets like mobile search banner ads and SMS advertising. Before you get too excited though, remember that mobile marketing is largely useless without a properly functioning mobile website.

Your Website, Mobile

Contrary to popular belief, websites built for standard web browsers do not display very well (if at all) on mobile devices. While standard websites can have multiple features, the main purpose behind a mobile site is a simple call-to-action.

Call-to-action features allow for users to accomplish something useful, such as finding the location of a restaurant, making a hotel reservation, or subscribing to text alerts or an e-newsletter. Whatever the action is, it should be easily accessible to users as soon they land on the site.

Whether the goal is getting more customers in the door, increasing online sales or reservations, a good mobile website will help make it happen. With a growing demand from mobile web users to have accessible and customizable mobile sites, business owners and marketers around the world are working to keep their customers happy both at their desk and on the go.

How does your website look on mobile devices?

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Photo courtesy of edans

Mobile Marketing and Your Website is a post from: RSA Blog