Tim Andren - At the corner of Innovation and Marketing - Powered by Guideas

Remix Session with Mani Iyer of Kwanzoo

Welcome to "The Remix Session," a soon to be regular feature for my blog, where I will give you access to my discussions with entrepreneurs, CEOs, designers, artists - people who I came across in my travels who have great vision and are doing innovative and inspiring work.

Let's kick of the Remix Session with a discussion I had with Mani Iyer, CEO of Kwanzoo.

Kwanzoo offers rich, engaging content for today's connected online user.

The Kwanzoo service allows marketers to quickly build interactive quizzes and polls and serve them on their website landing pages, blog, facebook fan pages and affiliate sites to engage users, trigger social sharing and turn them into customers.

The company is in private beta. Currently, about 1500 companies and agencies are testing the service.

Kwanzoo Presentation At Leadscon Las Vegas 2010

Tim Andren: Tell me about Kwanzoo. It's such a unique name, I know there's got to be a story behind it.

Mani Iyer: Well if you've seen the film 'Jerry Maguire,' Cuba Gooding Jr.'s concept of 'Kwan' (love, respect, community, and money) was the inspiration. We did a play on that word and came up with Kwanzoo.


Andren: I love Jerry Maguire and just about anything Cameron Crowe creates. Any movie that involves sports that I also get credit for on date night is a bonus! So how did you guys get started?

Iyer: When we first started, we were really focusing on building a site around trivia games and quizzes. Kwanzoo started out as a consumer site, then this whole world of widgets happened. We started widgetizing everything that we had in terms of our features, functions and capabilities.

Then we hit on the idea that what consumers want is really interactivity. They want rich, interactive content. They don't want blatant advertising - banner ads and display ads, most people are tuned out from them. What people really want to interact with is interesting, engaging content.


Andren: My mom was a huge John Lennon fan I find that his famous quote applies to many aspects of startups: "Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans." You're hitting on something so important in business, the idea of listening to your customer base and adapting your offering for them. Your product is B2B though, how did you structure your model for this?

Iyer: We just kept on evolving and came to the idea that 'Why not build an online service, where you make it really easy for marketers to create engaging, interactive content and they can then make it available to their users.' The users share the content back with their friends on social networks and the marketer's brand goes along with it.


Andren: You're weaving the offering into the preferred style of interaction. So many businesses waste their money with static banner ads when websites these days are so interactive with video, social and other dynamic options.

Iyer: Right, this is an indirect, subtle way of advertising - as opposed to a kind of an 'in your face,' blatant manner, which has been an issue with traditional display advertising.


Andren: I couldn't agree with you more. Having found that, the end client of today has graduated away from static websites and they're a lot more comfortable with the idea of banner advertising and opt-in e-mails. When I say 'comfortable', I guess, what I mean is that it's no longer relevant. It's the stuff that gets ignored with our selective vision.

The same goes for opt-in e-mails, I mean, I just know personally that I recognize them immediately and ignore them, like poisonous berries or something. Like you said with banner ads, that's the noise...that's the area online that I want to avoid when I'm searching for the information I want or engaging with the people I want to connect with.


Andren: How does customization play into this product of yours?

Iyer: Right now we support the first interactive ad unit called Quiz App. Your ads are so called 'personality quizzes' where essentially the user is profiling themselves. At the end of a series of questions, the quizzes are designed in a way that you can present a relevant offer to the user.

For example in distance education, 'what online degree is best for you?' The result of the quiz will point a user to a specific program.


Andren: I do a lot of marketing work in education. I've seen how this career advice tool works, only in the past it had to be programmed with Flash or something.

How did you know that you were going in the right direction with this new approach for Kwanzoo?

Iyer: We watched the evolution of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. The adoption was growing, but what we saw was missing in the marketplace was an easy way for small or large businesses to reach into that new audience. We found a gap in the marketplace for these interactive content units and ad units that marketers could create and embed on their own website that would direct their internal customers.

If they have an e-mail list of several thousand customers, now they send out a Quiz of the Week or Poll of the Week which is embedded on their website or blog post. We ran a series of tests last year and saw that these interactive ads, quizzes, polls, and such tend to draw pretty high engagement anywhere from 0.3 to 0.5% relative to standard banner ads which are .03 to .04%. Kwanzoo has seen from as high as 0.7 to even 1%.

Really, it's less about pushing the message and more about finding out what the user is interested in.


Andren: That's what interested me the most when I knew we were going to have this conversation, was hearing you speak about trust. The survey that you spoke to about peer recommendations versus standard advertising. Could you speak a bit more about that?

Iyer: Yes. In fact that is our core premise is that people online want rich, engaging, interactive content. They also want to know who the source is, which is why the idea of being branded is pretty important. So I know that this content comes from this business that I know about.

If I am then willing to share with my friends, the peer recommendation is much more powerful. The idea is that I do spend time reading my Facebook or Twitter feeds. If I see a Facebook update from a friend that talks about "I tried this (x) on this website..." and then recommends it to me, it's trustworthy.

Tim Andren is the founder of Guideas, Inc. an innovation and marketing company.

The State of The Internet

Here's a fresh video on global internet usage that details the eye-opening growth of the online world. The video aptly titled 'State of the Internet', has some staggering statistics.

For those of you familiar with the 'Did You Know' series of videos, it may not be quite as powerful, but the updated stats and graphics are well worth the watch.

The new Sun Chips bag is brand gold

"Show me you care, don't tell me", my old advertising teacher used to say.

Sun Chips have done exactly that and strengthened their brand with their new compostable packaging. 

This leap forward in their brand perception allows Sun Chips to more effectively weave into the eco-friendly community. A deeper relationship can now be forged with the customer based on action and product.

This example shines golden compared to the empty corporate logo plastering that occurs with earth-friendly communities and events. I remember being invited to a benefit concert in an effort to clean up the beaches where I live that was sponsored by a certain energy drink. I was shocked to see their cans and promotional items littered all over the sand.

Packaging can have as much effect on consumers as the product itself. It is the visual representation of, and container for the product. In many cases packaging has a 'remarketable' staying power as in Altoids tins, shoe boxes, etc. 

Since the package is a significant visual cue toward purchase of said product, then Sun Chips has answered the question - how can packaging be legitimizing? more effective?

The recent concerns of greenwashing and overuse of the words 'natural', 'organic', etc., have created a more skeptical consumer. In this case, it should be noted that with every passing day, this same consumer is able to perform a solid background check about a brand online on sites such as Good Guide, a "...source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home."

Given that the Sun Chips brand has always had a solid niche in the saturated (pun intended) world of chip companies, the biodegradable bag is a strong statement of walking the walk. 

Sun Chips passes the test by doing what they represent. How can your brand do the same?

Tim Andren is the founder of Guideas, Inc. an innovation and marketing company.

If I owned Facebook I would...

 

If I had the ability to switch desks with Mark Zuckerberg for a day, I'd probably take the day off and fly around in a corporate jet, sell all of my positions in Facebook and buy an island somewhere.

On a more realistic note, if I was tasked with developing productive solutions for Facebook, the company, I would probably sit down and seriously examine one study:

ARTICLE: Facebook directs more online users than Google [SFGate] states:

"...15 percent of traffic to major Web portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL came from Facebook and MySpace. The lion's share of that traffic, 13 percent came from Facebook."

"...Google accounted for 21.3 percent of referrals to sites catering to movie fans, but Facebook was second with 12.4 percent."

I'd then have a huge smile on my face as I called a meeting to announce my new easy-to-implement idea for our existing audience. This idea won't be about forcing users to do anything they don't already do, it will merely be focused on how people naturally behave when they exit the cozy confines of Facebook. Real-time social search.

The Twitter effect

In order to better explain, let's examine a competitor - Twitter. Countless times over the past 18 months I've wondered why Twitter hasn't taken advantage of the mindshare of their brand before someone else comes along and does it. Everyone knows they're working on a business model (or that's what we're told) and I've been wondering if, when they ever roll it out, they might be too late to the party.

Twitter has a relatively strong brand right now and it wouldn't take much (all non-programmers talk like this) effort to monetize their search results. Real-time social search is the future of online search and is already a major reason why so many people use Twitter right now.

As a user, if I want to know what I want to know, when I want to know it, I go to Twitter. I may have to filter the noise a bit, but if an earthquake or my beloved Seattle Mariner off-season player news needs to be had, chances are it'll be on Twitter before it's hit any major media outlet.

Now, a handful of context-relative text ads embedded in the sidebar of a search result would be accepted. Also, a text tweet ad embedded in the stream would be accepted too. Why they haven't done this yet is beyond me.

Conclusion

At Facebook, the outbound traffic I refer to in the above study quite often will be heading to a search engine and has gone from social mode (interaction) to hunt 'n peck mode (info gathering) so what do we need to create? A ubiquitous search box that saves them a step and monetizes the process using much the same methods that made Google, well, Google! 

In addition to this, user behavior such as link-sharing, citizen journalism, blog entries and general chatter can all be accessed to create crowdsourced content. This is a 'wave of the future' idea either, just look at Twitter Search. Facebook could be up and running with a project like this very quickly too.

Easier said than done? Maybe. But if even a small portion of the outbound traffic could be channeled into a Facebook search engine with a value-add that produces real-time results it would be a windfall for the company. 

An innovative investment that makes a lot of sense. No round pegs and square holes here considering the audience already exists and more importantly, the behavior does too.

Why innovation? It's time to get creative. (Part 5 of 5)

This series of posts will detail why innovation continues to be the most important aspect of business growth, especially in today’s flat business world.

The advent of the internet and the freedom with which information travels today has leveled the business playing field, therefore it must be understood that creativity and innovation have become increasingly valuable for future business growth.

"The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be."

— Isaac Asimov

So what have we learned this week? We know that business has changed rapidly these last few years. It’s been a perfect storm of change in fact. 

When times change, it’s important that we - and the organizations we work for, change along with them. In fact, it’s imperative that business forecast this transition ahead of time and plan for it, instead of being blindsided by it.

I would consider stopping for a moment and taking a look at how this will not only affect your company product, but your industry as a whole. 

I wrote a short post earlier in the week about how many companies in the wine industry are struggling to move inventory. Sales are down.

Could this have been planned for? I don’t know for sure, but I'm hearing story after story from owners and marketers, all with a general theme of ‘Who moved my cheese?'

The process of innovation should be a regular discipline for all businesses, not just when the times are tough, but for when things change and much like Mr. Asimov said, those times aren't going away anytime soon.

Wine industry turning to direct sales

Here's an interesting article about new strategic sales techniques being implemented due to economic pressures felt by the wine industry. 

The final quote shines light on a problem for so many industries and products in our 'flat world' e-conomy. “Making wine — that’s the easy part,” Mr. Sattui said. “It’s selling it that’s hard.” 

Food for thought. Or in this case, wine for the mind. 

ARTICLE: Try the Red: Napa Learns to Sell 

DESCRIPTION: No longer immune to oversupply, winemakers in California’s Napa Valley look to direct-to-buyer sales.

http://s.nyt.com/u/BmB

Why innovation? It's time to get creative. (Part 4 of 5)

 

This series of posts will detail why innovation continues to be the most important aspect of business growth, especially in today’s flat business world.

The advent of the internet and the freedom with which information travels today has leveled the business playing field, therefore it must be understood that creativity and innovation have become increasingly valuable for future business growth.

So how can you and your company adapt to capitalize on the transition from the information economy to the attention economy?

The key word in the above question is ‘adapt.’ To adapt is to evolve - and to evolve is to innovate in today’s business world.

Innovation can come in the form of new product offerings, new business processes or can spur your company to break completely new ground into the deep blue of possibility.

The big idea

As usual, creative thinkers are going to lead this change. Does your organization have a group of thinkers in executive or marketing team? Some do and the benefits of this type of think tank will work wonders for times of transition such as these. 

Sometimes an outside opinion helps because it allows for the crucial component of objectivity. Can you see the forest for the trees? Innovation consultants or creative teams are able to spot opportunities because their not sucked into the groupthink, corporate office politics or trapped by policies regarding how things should be done.

Package the package

Another item to ponder is the visual delivery of your new offerings. After all, in the attention economy we can agree that packaging the message will be just as important as the delivery itself. 

Elements to consider here would be the inclusion of clear visual design components in all aspects of the brand, packaging and website. An emphasis must be placed on meeting common cultural baselines with respect to color, iconography, etc. All aspects of the user interface and information design must take into account lightning quick decision-making on the user’s behalf and translate perfectly to a mobile platform. 

There is a reason why traffic signs are simple, visual icons - because the information needs to processed by thousands of different drivers from all walks of life, and quickly.

Buzz the biz

Finally, the complete product must have a marketable message, easily consolidated into a neat frame that can be passed along via social channels. The social component is going to be essential for all brands going forward. 

Business large and small are relying more and more on the buzz of business banter through the big social networks and tighter, niche channels on platforms such as Foursquare, Yelp and the like. As these networks grow and adapt, they will become more and more visual-based systems that will feature interactive components for their multitouch audience on smartphones and tablet computers. 

As Wayne Gretzky said: "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it's been."

Part 5 coming tomorrow.

Wired's new tablet magazine

Check out this fascinating and forward-thinking video from Wired - a media company that is at the forefront of innovative design and technology.

This new tablet version of their magazine is a good representation of how content will be delivered in this new format.

Why innovation? It's time to get creative. (Part 3 of 5)

This series of posts will detail why innovation continues to be the most important aspect of business growth, especially in today’s flat business world.

The advent of the internet and the freedom with which information travels today has leveled the business playing field, therefore it must be understood that creativity and innovation have become increasingly valuable for future business growth.

Why should I care?

Why is this whole attention economy and it’s relationship to innovation important to you? Because we’re talking about how to engage the mind of your average customer. 

For instance, the average consumer is spending the majority of their recreational time online, doing the exact same thing he or she used to do pre-Internet, watching video, playing, reading researching, etc. The difference now is that they have a mobile phone, browser windows open, music playing - among other things. 

So the customer’s ‘attention’ is relatively scarce and developing offerings that break through and deliver is essential for business growth. Innovative packaged products will need to not only be developed, they will need to bake the marketing message into the delivered solution as much as possible because return business will be much harder to come by. 

The competition

Contrast today’s dilemma with straight-forward advertising offerings delivered in the past. What did a magazine ad, tv spot or billboard have to compete with? Maybe one other form of media such as a magazine ad competing with a TV spot, but nothing close to the level of noise that is present today.

Websites today are quickly incorporating a lot more video content. This is not your typical staged advertising delivery but much more an opportunity to showcase the ideas of the company, the offering and how it all works. Why? Because they know their audience doesn’t have the time or isn’t in that frame of mind to begin with. 

Whether you are aware of it or you can quantify it or not, this is happening to your business customer too. B2Bers have got it a little easier, but they still have major hurdles to clear in this flat business world too. Understanding how to differentiate and gain attention while competing with a myriad of similar companies is no small task.

If we go back in time through history and examine the innovations of media (written word, printing press, radio, television, etc.) and how they changed not only the delivery of information but the whole way of life itself, you can see that it’s not really possible to overstate the importance of where we stand today.

Part 4 coming tomorrow.

How to fix the Dunk Contest

Dear David Stern,

I’m writing to inform you that the NBA Slam Dunk Contest and All-Star weekend as a whole has become a pathetic annual event. This sad affair has left me in a state of confusion considering how effective you have been in marketing your sport as a whole.

You know better than anyone else just how much the NBA and the popularity of basketball itself have grown by leaps and bounds over past few decades. In addition, you’ve marketed the stars of the game into brands and leveraged lucrative televisions deals to boot.

So why is it that you can’t seem to figure out how to properly assemble a solid package of entertainment for All-Star weekend that would surely lift your product to the moon?

What is all this with Nate Robinson and his 17 attempts to dazzle us with dullness? Why must you allow players like Chris ‘The Birdman’ Andersen and the like to subject us to their empty promises? 

I attended All-Star Weekend here in Los Angeles and still cannot get that sad, hollow silence out of my mind. I wished I could have jumped in a Delorean and set it back in time to the eighties.

What happened to the days when the battles of Jordan and Dominique drove fans into a frenzy with their virtuoso displays of athletic grace? That was must-see-TV back then. I can recall being at a party for that event (yes, you read that right) that was on par with any SuperBowl shindig I’ve ever attended. Surely those events were major forces towards the growth of your business, right?

Have no fear though Mr. Stern, I’m not writing to you only to complain or ask rhetorical questions. As a professional innovator and marketer I have come equipped with solutions for what ails you.

Here are a few easy-to-apply ideas that can get you the interest of the fans back to where it was in the eighties by making the Slam Dunk Contest a buzz worthy event again.

A. Star Power

The most obvious solution is to get the stars back into the mix. Who wouldn’t make an appointment with their television set or have a get together at their home to watch Kobe battle Lebron? How do you do this? Bragging rights aren’t enough any more - we understand that, but it doesn’t mean you can’t put up a nice multi-million dollar prize to entice the big boys. What would your return on investment be for increased ticket and jersey sales in addition to the massive advertising revenue? Can you only allow All-Stars themselves to participate?

B. Shoe Contracts

Even if you couldn’t lure the big boys back, how about we apply some time-tested brand strategy and get a good story woven into the event. In recent years you’ve used the event to market your younger stars. Get into a co-branded joint venture with a major shoe company, build a mini reality TV show buzz prior to the event and have them award a shoe contract to the winner. Can you imagine Demar Derozan getting his Nike deal on live TV? It’s certainly better than that spin-the-wheel idea you had....that was a joke on us wasn’t it Mr. Stern? You weren’t serious when you pulled that one on us were you?

C. Team Up

Okay so what about making it a team event? You could organize contestants into teams that battle it out in different categories...height, alley-oops contests, etc. Teams could have uniforms and scores. You did kind of open up Pandora’s box when you had Air Up There hand out the award because that means that everyone is going to wonder why he didn’t just participate. We’d love to see you open the event up, but I know that can get messy so we’ll give you the mulligan on that one.

D. H.O.R.S.E.

H.O.R.S.E. is a legendary playground game (you’re not doing so great with that idea either) and can be incorporated into the Dunk Contest for added variability. Matching dunk for dunk would be fun and it would add an element of surprise from the opponents.

In addition to these ideas, get your fans involved with real-time voting (via social networks) that is tracked with a live meter on the screen. 

As a note, your current text messaging polls are so 1998. There’s nothing more boring than announcing a winner after the fact without knowing the real deal. 99.9% of your audience can’t attend the live show, but they can feel like they’re there. 

Another concept to consider is that your judges scoring is usually off base and not just by a small fraction. This random assortment of ex-players are the most consistently inconsistent bunch that leaves most of us fans more confused than Knickerbockers on draft day.

These are just some ideas off the top of my head. I’m sure you can easily incorporate one or several of them immediately and see a return to the passion for the Dunk Contest. Once again, these ideas are positioned so that they generate revenue for you and grow the backbone of your sport. Remember how many of your fans have access to alternative programming these days and it’s going to take something special to keep them coming back for more.