Augmented Reality (AR) as a technology has existed for more than 15 years, with tailored applications in industrial automation, theme parks, sports television, military displays, and online marketing (AIB, 2009). Forrester research defined AR as; The concept of AR simply put is the overlay of virtual or artificial information either in the form of visuals, graphics, or text onto a medium, which is then projected over an actual image stream. This additional information can then be augmented to the user either by using a wearable display setup or through a fixed location setup.

The next stage of internet engagement is going to be its connection with physical space. AR will be an important tool in this evolution. Based on a Total Immersions definition, there are 3 types of AR; Web-based AR, Kiosk-based AR and mobile AR. Web-based AR uses PC and webcam with a marker, image or through motion capture. It is the most common type of AR since it runs on Flash and does not require a plug-in or any kind of download. It is also the most economical option and can be easily integrated with social platforms. However, users need to have a webcam in order to use it.

Kiosk based AR is capable of running more powerful AR applications using 3D or facial tracking. It can leverage multiple platforms and can reach broader users through out-of-home or point-of-purchase marketing. Also, the user does not need a marker or a webcam for using it. However, it is relatively more expensive. Mobile AR uses the viewfinder to show the digital information in user’s surroundings. Mobile AR can leverage location and, with smartphone adoption rising, its potential reach is increasing. However, mobile is a fragmented environment, since some smartphones run on different platforms, such as iOS and Android, and the battery life of a smartphone can be an obstacle. Additionally, hype around this type of AR is hard to control. (Adage, 2011)

According to Gartner Inc, AR is one of the top 10 strategic IT technologies and is expected to be a $1.5 Bn industry by 2015 . However, viability of reaching this number is much debated. According to some experts this number will be reachable since AR can be applicable to many industries and has various use cases. On the other hand, some experts argue that this number is not realistic since AR will take time to reach mainstream adaption.

Approximately 42.5 million people enter online sweepstakes every year and millions more participate in SMS and social media contests. In fact, contests and games are the most popular brand tactic used to grow followers and fans in the social media space. Twenty-four percent of the U.S. online audience play branded social games at least once a month with 68.7 million U.S. consumers expected to regularly play branded games of chance by 2012. (ComScore)
Contests, games, and sweepstakes are a key component of the social media marketing movement because they target specific demographic segments, cross diverse brand categories easily, and — most importantly — provide a measurable return on investment while creating meaningful engagement with consumers.

Here are the top five tips for success in online promotions.
#1 CLEAR OBJECTIVES
When developing an online promotion make sure your promotional objectives are clear. A promotion designed to generate trial of a new product, for instance, is not necessarily the right promotion for long-term loyalty, while a program to drive opt-in email registrations may require a different set of parameters. Baseline metrics should be established at the outset so that the right type of promotion is employed and performance can be quantified.

#2 ENGAGING EXPERIENCE THAT IS PRIZE APPROPRIATE
Online promotions should engage participants with immersive branded experiences that resonate and should be more than just a blatant prize pitch. While prizes are an important component of any online promotion, they should support the overarching brand objective while appealing to the target demographic and involving visitors. Whether it is user generated content, an interactive game mechanic, or even just the ability to select from among available prizes, always make visitors part of the experience when structuring your program.
You also want to make sure the prize fits both your target audience and your brand. You may want to consider multiple prizes and even discounts, giving participants the feeling they have a real chance of winning something. For instance, Woman Within – a leading online retailer- recently launched a “Tee Time” advergame on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/womanwithin?v=app_4949752878 that utilized an escalating discount feature. The higher your score, the greater your discount for Woman Within apparel. Simple, yet effective.

Don’t forget to make it fun! Don’t just put out a sweepstakes, give-a-way or contest. Consider your target audience. What do they like. How do they behave online? What would they be likely to participate in? This is true for the type of promotion as well as the prizes.

#3 TIMING AND BUZZ-BUILDING
Your contest or sweepstakes should have a clear beginning and end. The internet is the land of instant gratification so making the promotional event too long could have diminishing returns and lessen buzz around the promotion. On the other hand, you want to allow enough time to effectively promote the contest or sweepstakes and allow for others to share and respond.
Regarding buzz, you can make your interactive promotion viral by leveraging the power of the internet to exponentially grow the reach of your promotion. Tell-a-friend components, plug-ins such as Facebook Connect, integrated Twitter feeds, and more turn online promotions into natural lead generators.
Don’t forget to leverage the PR opportunities! Once winner affidavits of eligibility and liability releases secured, award prizes publicly and turn it into an event. This will not only continue the buzz around the promotion, but people want to know who won, what they won and why they won. Depending on the prize, you may be able to leverage the winner’s enthusiasm in social media sites by encouraging them to talk about their experience and win. This also reassures participants that prizes were awarded. Dairy Queen, for example, recently wrapped up a video contest in which six lucky winners won a MINI Cooper http://www.dairyqueen.com/us-en/mini/ . Instead of just giving the cars away, the vehicles will be awarded to the winners at local restaurants to engage local media and leverage the promotional “after-effect”.

# 4 KNOW THE TYPES OF PROMOTIONS AND SELECT WISELY
There are very subtle and very important differences between online “sweepstakes,” “games” and “contests.” Brands must ensure they choose the best option to fit their marketing goals, audience behaviors, desired engagement, and that their online promotion is structured to comply with the various laws surrounding games of chance.
Online Sweepstakes generally have two principal components: (1) a registration component and (2) a drawing element for prizes (daily, weekly, monthly or at the end of the program). Interactive elements can be incorporated into the Sweepstakes to create rich user experiences with branded elements but no skill is required by the entrant.
Online Games are generally a variation of a sweepstakes; however, they require a perceived element of skill to engage participants at a deeper level. Share-it features are often integrated to spread the reach of the promotion. They are sometimes referred to as “Instant Win Games”.
Online Contests are not generally games of chance. Unlike a Sweepstakes or a Game, they require entrants to exhibit a degree of skill (make a video, submit a photo, write an essay, etc.) that must be graded by a panel of judges using an established criteria set forth in the Official Rules. Contests typically require the deepest level of brand engagement.

#5 LEGAL, LIABILITY AND LOGISTICS/PLATFORMS
Pay close attention to the development to official rules, privacy policies, prize sourcing/fulfillment, consumer affairs, winner handling/notification, and more because there are a host of issues that must be carefully managed. There are also a number of legal considerations to consider so it’s best to engage a professional firm with proven experience in online games, contests, and sweepstakes to help you structure an online promotion that is in compliance with federal and state regulations.
In fact, on March 8, 2011, the FTC released its list of Top Consumer Complaints areas for 2010. The category of “Prizes, Sweepstakes, and Lotteries” had 64,085 complaints, accounting for five percent of all complaints the FTC received, most having to do with brands not following or understanding their outlined rules and regulations. Some areas to be mindful of include:
• Laws surrounding Games of Chance
• State requirements for bonding and registration of Games of Chance
• Judging criteria for contests
• Children’s Online Privacy Protection (COPPA) -for Under 13’s
• Intellectual property rights and patents
• Regulated industries
• International laws for programs that cross national borders

Brand promotions are increasingly consumed on-the-go, so you want to consider the most relevant platforms for your core audience. Designing and building promotional campaigns that are three-screen friendly and are ideally platform agnostic will deliver the widest audience. In terms of mobile, for example, programs should provide a full experience regardless of the underlying operating system to increase reach and drive conversions.

In summary, here are several key points about interactive and online promotions to keep in mind as you move forward:

• Online promotions are flexible. They can exist as stand alone programs or as bolt-on features to wider integrated campaigns.
• They accomplish a wide variety of marketing objectives.
• When compared to other marketing solutions, they are cost effective, can typically be launched at a fraction of other programs, and are natural lead generators.
• Make sure your promotional objectives are clear when considering an online promotion and that metrics for measuring the success of a program are considered prior to execution.
• Engage a promotion firm with proven experience developing online games, contests, and sweepstakes to ensure that all technical, logistical, and legal considerations are addressed.

Read up on a recent campaign we delivered with partner Maritz for Embassy Suites. It highlights the power of games in existing loyalty programs. It asks the question: “Why should I reward customers that are already loyal to my brand?”
http://www.maritz.com/News-Events-and-Insights/Social-Community/Man-vs-Brand/Brand-Engagement/Suites-Surprises-and-DelightsOh-My.aspx

Article Highlights:

• “The question usually surfaces after recommending a surprise & delight strategy that consists of a brand giving something of value to a customer just for being one of their best. A great example of the impact such a strategy can have is with a recent promotion we co-created with the Embassy Suites brand marketing team.”

• “One test group was linked to an online game experience where they were educated on the brands values and in the process they played their way towards their own selection of gifts. The interactive game was designed in collaboration with Maritz’ partner, Brandmovers.”

• “And the results speak for themselves. The email open rate for surprise and delight segments had a 53 percent average and the guests that received this unique treatment increased their stays by 10 percent over the control group. They also spent nine percent more during the promotion period. Remember, there was no requirement to book a room, but it occurred at a higher rate and with guests that were already loyal to the brand. Overall, the promotion generated a 246 percent ROI and we, ourselves, were “surprised and delighted” as these loyal guests responded by bringing a greater portion of their wallet share to the brand.”

In short it’s how people consume and process media in both time and priority.
Usually monochronic people process one thing at a time and then move on to the next task, preferably in an orderly and sequential. Whereas polychronic people deal with multiple tasks simultaneously or conduct many tasks at once.

So why is this relevant to marketing communications?

Because two generations have been taught to process information contrarily to their parents or other family members. This produces a unique dilemma to many marketers. The question is how should I allocate promotional media budgets? To understand this dynamic we first of all need to identify who is a Monochronic or Polychronic consumer. Secondly what type of device they prefer or use the most often.

Most people over the age of 40 were instructed to read sequentially, one word and then page after another. This was perfect for the mass media marketers of the 40’s to 90’s. In the late 90’s people started to defy conventional messaging by disrupting the control channel and attention span. While most monochromic consumers accepted and embraced broadcast media, younger generations did not.

Conversely the digital consumer (whose main demographic is under 40 and mostly grew up with computers, internet, cell phones etc) rejected or changed media distribution and consumption based on their personal preferences and also processed multi-media at the same time.

So consider these differences during your next planning meetings.

We’ve seen games on phones and games on Facebook but have video game houses gone too far? The new urinal game from Sega allows users to compete against each other when they head to the restroom:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/18/sega-toylet-become-a-video-whiz-at-the-urinal/?hpt=C2

Is this too much? Maybe, but it sure is interesting to see how integrated and acceptable games are in our lives.

Understanding where games fit into your marketing mix is essential as a marketer. Did you know that games can be used to engage employees and sales channels in addition to consumers? How about the fact that U.S. internet users log 407 Million hours of game time every month. Games are outlets for us to have fun and to be comfortable in a stress free environment. When the benefits of games are integrated into a branded environment, the results can be astounding.

So get out and find a game to play, you’ll be “relieved” to know you could have so much fun with one.

The explosion in social media is changing the way Millenials engage traditional retail channels.  With over half a billion users on Facebook alone, it has never been easier for retailers to reach mass scale without sacrificing the relevance of their message or product offer to targeted audiences.      Welcome to f-commerce, the next wave in social media.   The National Retail Federation shares some thoughts on how social media is changing the game for the retail future in the following article:

http://blog.nrf.com/2011/01/12/not-on-facebook-heres-why-you-should-be/

1) How online Games, Contests and Sweepstakes can be used to generate a positive ROI for your brand; 

 
One of the most significant but often disregarded aspects in the vast online spectrum is social media monitoring. It is imperative to measure the social media presence of your company and industry to produce content, create strategy and fix any disreputable PR catastrophes before they’ve had a chance to develop (think Coca Cola, Nestle and BP). Below are some steps to take when devising your social monitoring strategy:

What are my objectives?

The initial step in ensuring your monitoring will be worthwhile is to define your current business objectives. Examples of objectives could be identifying or measuring brand recognition, customer loyalty, new markets or social media buzz. For instance, do you want to measure the success of a social media campaign, or even your competitors? Or maybe you’ve recently launched a new product or advertising slogan and would like to observe the public’s response. Whether it’s marketing, public relations, social media, customer service or any other aspect you’d like to measure, it’s achievable.

What to measure?

Once objectives are acknowledged, the next step will be to identify various keywords to measure. The first and most obvious is the company brand name, to determine whether you’re being talked about and to identify any dissatisfied customers or common misspellings/nicknames associated with your brand. Other measurable keywords include competitors, common SEO keywords, slogans, Directors, business partners, events, industry topics, news and products.

What tools to use?

- Google Alerts, Analytics & Trends: Simple mix of updates of keywords, insights into web traffic and monitoring of topic trends.

- Social Networking Sites: Twitter, Facebook, TweetDeck and HootSuite allow you to search, filter and interact with large volumes of real-time conversation.

- Social Networking Tools: Ice Rocket, It’s Trending, Ellerdale and Twitterfall for tracking and searching specified content on social networking sites,

- Blog tools: Blog Pulse and Technorati to monitor daily activity
- Free Social Media Monitoring: Social Media Mention and HowSociable?
- Premium Social Media Monitoring: Radian 6, Alterian, Scout Labs or Visible Technologies for more bespoke and expert monitoring.

How to Analyse?

When examining results on various monitoring platforms, human monitoring is essential to structure and define data and to filter out any unnecessary, irrelevant or inaccurate results. It is essential to identify recurring trends and phases, identify new markets, compare volume of conversations and the main online sources, monitor brand sentiment or feedback and identify domains with the most conversations.

Recommendations

To gain a realistic overview of your brand it is advisable to use a mixture of paid and free monitoring tools for full variety and understanding. Once you’ve reported what’s effective and what isn’t, it’s crucial to alter your strategy or approach accordingly i.e. customer service and products. For this to be achieved a brand needs to use monitoring to learn rather than merely listen to opinions or criticism. Rather than using technology to impose on discussions, customer trust can be maintained by using social media portals to invite feedback whether negative or positive. As a result, measuring and initiating online conversation is priceless and the key to continuous improvement.

If you’d like to discuss this in more depth, please drop a tweet to @brandmovers_US

I wanted to share some breaking news about Facebook’s Promotional Policy that will positively impact your ability to easily and cost effectively run promotions on your Facebook fan pages!

In a nutshell:
• You no longer have to seek permission from Facebook for administering promotions on Facebook
• There is no longer a minimum media investment required to support a promotion on Facebook
We’ve recently conducted a number of very successful Facebook promotions on behalf of our clients.

Here is a link to a recent program for HGTV’s House Hunters:
http://www.facebook.com/Brandmovers?v=app_142548245781030

Unscrupulous users exploit technologies shortcomings by masquerading themselves for personal benefit.   Stone (2007) defines “sock-puppeting” as the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company. A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an internet community speaks with or about himself or herself, pretending to be a different person, like a ventriloquist manipulating a hand puppet. Trust is an essential ingredient of digital communities, therefore members should have a healthy dose of skepticism when participating in these types of communities.

So make sure you can identify your customers otherwise your brand can end up looking for a bailout!