Hustle off to the newsstand and grab a copy of the December issue of Popular Science magazine, which features the 21st annual "Best of What's New" review. The magazine describes it as "a celebration of our wildest technological dreams" and spotlights dozens of "long awaited or completely unexpected, (and) equally amazing" recent scientific and engineering breakthroughs.
Even better: Popular Science used SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get solution to make the entire Best Of What's New section interactive -- just use your camera phone to snap a picture of any of the pages (see the magazine for specifics), send the image to [email protected] (AT&T, Verizon and Alltell users can send via shortcode 070707) -- and you'll get a spiffy digital image of a vintage Popular Science cover, an instant response from some of the Best Of What's New award-winning companies, and a chance to win a Garmin nüvi 500 GPS device.
Here at SnapTell we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about what we call the GET -- the content that a brand offers to consumers as part of an interactive image-recognition based marketing campaign. Here’s what we’ve learned about the type of content that tends to spark a consumer’s interest, inspiring them to reach out to an advertiser and initiate a conversation.
The GET Has To Be Good This seems painfully obvious, but it’s sometimes overlooked: if the GET isn’t appealing consumers won’t bother to connect. Conversely if the GET is interesting, amusing or unique, consumers will not only engage they’ll also likely share the GET with others and become evangelists for the brand.
Design The GET For The Lowest Common Denominator There’s nothing more frustrating to an interested consumer than a GET that they can’t get. Tailor GETs to the broadest possible audience by making SMS, available on over 98% of the world’s phones, a standard initial response. While mobile delivery of video content is clearly the future it is not yet accessible to all users on all networks on all phones, so resist the temptation to offer video as the only GET option.
Offer Multiple Engagement Options In The GET Targeting the GET to the lowest common denominator does not mean offering boring text-only content. For example The Weinstein Company’s recent full length feature film release of Morgan Spurlock’s “Where in the World is Osama Bin Linden?” asked consumers to snap a picture of the movie poster at the theater, in local newspaper print ads or from one of the thousands of flyers distributed in five major cities. Consumers then received multiple GET options including a simple short text synopsis of the movie with links to view the theater preview of the release, links to Yahoo movie reviews, and geo-specific content for local movie theater times with the option to purchase tickets via Fandango. In addition, every consumer who participated in the campaign was instantly entered into a sweepstakes in the local market. Over 40% of consumers who snapped a picture of the movie poster drilled multiple layers down to seek out more information about the content and the movie -- far better than the average .02% click through rates achieved by online banner ads.
I am an iPhone Apps junkie. I download the things on a whim,
impressed by the capabilities, only to discover weeks later that they
have almost no practical application what so ever. However, I happened
upon one today, that just might prove useful.
SnapTell is a free iPhone app that… Well here’s the description:
Snap a picture of the cover of any Book, DVD, CD, or
Video game and within seconds see a rating, description and links to
Amazon, Wikipedia, IMDb and more. If you like the item, click on a
link to buy it right away.
CogDogBlog reviewed the app, and added some interesting thoughts on image recognition app use in educational/museum settings:
I’ve been playing a little with the QRCode readers like NeoReader on the iPhone, especially in Japan, where there where QR codes in the newspaper, on stores, on public signs,
but its a challenge because you have to get a square on framed shot,
it’s hard to get a good photos of the small ones. It takes too much
effort.
So I gave SnapTell a quick test last night, taking a picture of a
paperback that has been traveling with me, so its front page is curled
and torn, and I took this photo under room light, what I would call
non-optimal photo conditions. So I took the image in the SnapTell app, clicked “use photo” and within 5 seconds it correctly identified it. 100% correct as Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry. More than linking to Amazon, it ferrets a relevant link in Wikipedia to the author plus a link to a preset Google search (and Yahoo) for more information.
Thanks, everyone! And if you haven't tried SnapTell's Explorer for the iPhone yet you can download it for free here, from the app store.
The SnapTell Explorer for the iPhone is now available for download on the Apple App Store.
This free download, powered by SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get image recognition technology, gives camera phone users instant information on virtually any book, movie DVD, video game or music CD.
We all know you can’t judge a book by its cover, and the same goes for films, music, and games. But fret not, because SnapTell’s new Mobile Movie Explorer can help make sure that you never have buyer’s remorse again -- just snap the picture, send it to SnapTell, and you’ll get comprehensive information and reviews for the product you’re interested in right on your iPhone.
Don't own an iPhone? No problem. You can access the same information on virtually any camera phone, just snap a picture and send it via MMS to [email protected] or use the shortcode SNAPIT (762748).
Attention adrenaline addicts: the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers show will be returning to a TV near you in mid-October! The coming season features new high-tech
tricked-out vehicles, new teams and new strategies for delving into the heart
of Mother Nature’s most intense experiences without getting your face and/or assorted appendages ripped
off in the process.
And to soothe your Storm Chaser needs until the new season premiers on October 19th (Sundays at 10 p.m), pick up a copy of Wired Magazine’s October issue (on sale now). There’s a great ad from Discovery Channel with information on one of the coolest Storm Chaser trucks, a dictionary of weird weather terms (do you know what a “Wedge” is? Animal Precipitation? Anvil Zits? If not, you will after you read the insert).
And there’s also a terrific bonus offer that will totally blow you away: Snap a picture of the ad using your phone’s camera, Send it in an MMS to [email protected], and you’ll almost instantly Get an exclusive
Storm Chasers clip on your mobile phone.
The Discovery channel used SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform to power their Storm Chaser clip offering. Snap.Send.Get can turn any image associated with a brand into a dynamic mobile marketing campaign. 100% permission-based, Snaptell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing solution enables brand owners and retailers to communicate directly with consumers, within seconds of the consumer's request for information. For more information, please email SnapTell.
Publishers Weekly has a detailed article analyzing the success of Random House’s Vroengard Academy, a virtual world and online game based on the wildly popular Inheritance cycle novels by Christopher Paolini.
SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform is being used to power some of Vroengard Academy's online and offline scavenger hunts; players must figure out clues, search for specific items and then snap pictures of the items with a camera phone and send them to the academy via MMS.
From the Publishers Weekly article:
The game launched June 2, and more than 20,000 users signed up in the first three weeks; the number has since doubled to more than 41,000. “We’re really excited about that number,” says Linda Leonard, director of new media marketing at RHCB. “It’s definitely in line with where we wanted to go.”
According to Leonard, there is a 45% return rate among users, which shows the number of players revisiting to the site to check their progress and complete weekly challenges. She adds that a return rate of this level is high for this kind of campaign, and that there is strong participation among girls, with a 60/40 split between male and female players.
A two-week viral marketing campaign, which involved a “lost dog”-style teaser poster campaign, led up to the game’s launch. Once the game started, Random introduced three additional promotions in U.S. cities throughout the summer. During the first of these, sites in Austin and San Francisco were painted with Vroengard Academy murals, and street teams passed out 5,000 flash drives, which contained a “lost chapter” from Eragon, as well as an audio clip from Paolini. Online maps directed fans to the giveaway locations.
During two subsequent periods—one in mid-June and one earlier this month—10,000 additional flash drives were distributed at locations in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Boston and Chicago. The later flash drives contained additional unique series information: the third, for instance, included an excerpt from Brisingr, which could only be unlocked after solving a clue in the Vroengard Academy. As Leonard puts it, “We wanted to give the fan base content they could enjoy and interact with all summer, and really make this an event for them.”
In this video interview with business news site BNET TV, Adam Schneider, Vice President, Sales, discusses ways that publishers and brand owners can use SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get solution to bring new life to ads that are, as Adam says, "just lying there dead on the page."
Adam also talks about recent changes he's seen in the mobile marketing space and the ways that SnapTell-enabled ads enables brand owners, publishers and marketers to collect actionable metrics which they can then use to finetune their marketing efforts on the fly and enrich the ways they connect with consumers.
Case studies and the most interesting mobile marketing solutions will take center stage at the Mobile Marketing Forum in New York City next week. SnapTell is one of the event’s sponsors.
Among the brands presenting at this year's event are:
adidas: a case study on the use of mobile marketing
Fandango, Sears Holding Corp: a panel session on mobile marketing for retail
CBS Corp: Opportunities for Mobile Marketing & Advertising in the US Market
Univision, The Weather Channel Interactive, Handango: How multimedia in mobile marketing can improve response rates
Anheuser-Busch: Case study on BudLight's March Madness
Additional brand participation includes: MLB Advanced Media, The Coca-Cola Company, Delta Air Lines, Google, Yahoo! and more.
It’s all happening on June 10 - 11, 2008 at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square.
If you'd like to meet with SnapTell at the Forum to discuss our Snap.Send.Get Mobile Marketing platform or mobile marketing in general, please contact us.
SnapTell will be at the New York Mobile Marketing Forum on June 10th & 11th, 2008, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square Hotel.
The Mobile Marketing Forum is the place to learn about all things mobile; how to launch a mobile marketing campaign, how to define strategic objectives to ensure optimal engagement with the consumer and how to leverage all of the options in mobile effectively.
If you are interested in mobile marketing, this is the conference for you. And if you'd like to meet with SnapTell at the Forum, please contact us. We look forward to seeing you in New York City!
We’ve seen a couple of reports on our Snap.Send.Get mobile
marketing solution that bring up that bizarre little gadget from the late ‘90’s
-- the late and unlamented CueCat. We aren’t really offended, because it’s such
an obviously wrong and silly analogy. But we thought we’d set the record
straight anyway.
The CueCat was an annoying extra device with limited functionality
and extremely limited information-offering capabilities. Snap.Send.Get works on
any camera phone (Over 70% of phones sold in the U.S. have cameras on them, and the
camera is already rated by consumers as the most important feature on a
cell phone after voice and text) and lets users request and receive information about a wide variety
of products, services and entertainment. Some brand owners also provide unique
content to Snap.Send.Get such as ring tones, wallpapers, games, and movie
trailers.
Wikipedia, in its article on the CueCat, quotes reporter Debbie
Barham of the Evening Standard as saying that the CueCat "fails to solve a
problem which never existed." That about sums it up, we think.
When we first began developing Snap.Send.Get we wanted to
create a service that would solve problems for its users. Something that would
be both useful and fun to use, something that would make life a little more
friction-free. We think we’ve achieved that with Snap.Send.Get, and as we push the image-recognition technology frontier we will provide more solutions
that help consumers with their day-to-day decisions.
One example is our newly launched Mobile Entertainment
Explorer which now offers access to information on over a million movies, music CDs
and video games right from your camera phone. Just Snap a picture of any DVD,
CD or video game cover with your camera phone, Send the picture to SnapTell
([email protected]) using MMS messaging and instantly Get back information including reviews,
prices, run times, descriptions of the content and links about that DVD, CD or
video game on your cell phone.
