The Teens They Are A-Changin’

One of the easiest traps to fall into when thinking about teens is to think back to your own teen years for guidance or inspiration. Those halcyon days of yesteryear may be wonderful to reflect on and reminisce about with friends but, trust me, they aren’t going to help you understand the current crop of teens. Why? Because the teen experience changes all the time.

In some ways things have stopped changing as much as they used to. When I was a kid I couldn’t really identify with my parents’ taste in clothes or music or pop culture. My own teen children don’t seem that different to where I was 30 years ago. (Damn, damn, damn, I just did it myself!) The truth is, they experience things very differently than I did at their age and to forget that is to risk doing really stupid things.

There are some very obvious things that have changed from one generation to the next. Technology, clearly, has changed a lot. Mobile, which has completely redefined our world, is less than a decade old. The Internet as a popular medium is less than 25 years old. Tech will continue to race ahead but think about other some of the other, more subtle changes. The media mix, for example, or going to the movies, or getting together with friends. All of these things have changed in ways that reframe the teen experience.

To try to a list of all the ways things have changed would be impossible so collected a handful of representative examples. It’s difficult to find exact apples-to-apples comparisons, so many of the stats included below should be viewed as directional. They illustrate broad changes in trends over time. Despite this, I think you’ll get the point.

• Driving The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that, in 1996, 85% of high school seniors had their driver’s license. According to AAA, in 2014, only 54% of teens get their license by the time they are 18. The freedom of the open road just isn’t what it was. In part, the drop in driving rates is attributed to the recession; but many teens also report not needing to drive.
• Summer employment In 1994, almost 55% of teens had summer jobs. Today that number is just under 35%. That’s a pretty big drop and one that impacts not only teen income but also the amount of idle time available to kids, and you know what they say about idle hands …
• Marijuana use In 1996, the National Institute of Drug Abuse reported that 49.6% of high school seniors had used marijuana. In 2013, 41.3% of all high school students reported having smoked marijuana. This gradual decline is seen in virtually all substance categories. Cigarette smoking, for example, was reported by 65% of high school seniors in 1996 but by 2013 only 41% of high school students had ever even tried a cigarette.
• Sex In 1996, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found 29% of kids between 12 and 18 reported having had sex. Research by the Department of Health and Human Services conducted in 2013 found that 47% of high school students reported having had sex. That’s a pretty sharp increase; however, teen pregnancies are down.

These changes, occurring over the span of 20 years or more, make it critical to remove your memories from the way you think about teens. Asking teens directly may net some useful insights but perhaps the most effective approach for understanding teens is to observe and engage with them in their natural habitats. I’ve written about gaming connecting with teens through gaming communities and music in the past. These indirect routes may offer a clearer window into the lives of teens in a time of change.

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Originally published at www.mediapost.com.

Connecting with Teens with Special Needs

Most of what is said about connecting with teens assumes the teen you’re connecting with is typical (but really, what does typical even mean?). The fact is there are millions of teens across the U.S. who face some challenge or another. As the father of one of these teens, I thought it might be useful to talk a bit about how my son experiences the world, what he wants from life and how the people, institutions and businesses around him can help.

My son, who is 18 now, has struggled with developmental delays virtually his entire life. His motor skills and executive functioning aren’t great and when he was a kid his ability to regulate his behavior wasn’t good either. He has come a long way and I’m proud of him and I like him and I love him. It can be hard watching as he tries to make sense of the world and his place in it.

We’re fortunate to live in a great town, where the school district has been willing to do everything they can to provide support. That has meant my son has been “out of district” since he was in kindergarten. The schools he has attended have been fantastic but each of them has been in a different community. When he was young that wasn’t such an issue; but as he grew older that became a problem. Without friends in his hometown he felt isolated and lonely.

So one of the things to think about when thinking about teens with special needs is the fact that they may have fewer connections to the community than other kids. It might not be about going to school in another town. Sometimes the nature of a kid’s disabilities can make it hard for them to fit in or be accepted. Finding ways to bring kids into the community is really important but really tricky.

For my son, participating in “special needs” groups or activities doesn’t cut it. He’s a smart and self-aware guy and sometimes he doesn’t want to be segregated. It’s hard though, it’s obvious he has challenges and that can make some typical teens uncomfortable. It can be heart-wrenching to watch your kid try to initiate a conversation with a peer in a store or movie theater, only to be ignored, rebuffed or laughed at.

The fact is, he has many of the same interests as any other teenage boy. He plays way too many video games, likes to go to the movies, struggles to figure out girls, has to deal with an annoying boss and objects to almost everything I say. He wants so badly just to be accepted.

There are signs of hope. Beginning in September he will be enrolled in a life-skills program in our town. For the first time since he was a toddler he’ll be going to school with kids from his community and he’s elated. A big part of this program is focused on being a part of the community. Using local transportation, shopping in local stores, going to a local gym and working for a local business.

It’s great that the school district and business community can work together to create opportunities for kids like my son. The jobs these businesses offer aren’t sheltered workshops but are ones that match requirements with capabilities. That is a degree of engaging a teen with special needs that is super meaningful. It brings them in rather than keeping them apart. For my son that’s incredibly powerful.

Even a seemingly small gesture – greeting someone warmly (but not unnaturally), welcoming them, asking for their input and opinion – can make a world of difference. When my son heard about the program here in town he was initially ambivalent but excited by the prospect. He was worried about leaving his current school and losing the connection to friends there. Once he met with the staff and learned more he was ready to make the move.

As the possibilities of being connected to his community have sunk in, his mood has been lifted. Here’s a note he sent about the opportunity:

 im feeling good i can see my future and i feel hope i haven’t felt hope for almost the entire year i can see the path but i don’t know my destonason  

It’s OK that he doesn’t know his destination. Who does? But it’s important that he can see a path forward, and that is something everyone should support.

Originally published at www.mediapost.com.

WebInno X Preview

WebInno is turning 10. That’s a pretty amazing accomplishment and Dave Beisel deserves a ton of thanks for creating not just an event that has grown and thrived over the past decade but a community that has done the same. The companies that have appeared at the event over the years are truly impressive. Dropbox, Reddit, RunKeeper, CustomMade, Localytics and Fiksu are just a few of the companies for which WebInno was a step on the path to success.

I’ve been attending for eight years or so and have only missed a handful of events in that time. The big 10^th Anniversary WebInno is happening tomorrow and I sure won’t be missing it.

Here are the companies that will be on hand for tomorrow’s event:

Main Dishes

Crayon – Get awesome marketing ideas. Free. – Crayon bills itself as “the most comprehensive marketing design search engine on the web.” I can’t say how many other marketing design search engines are out there but I can say Crayon has a ton of stuff in it. When you fire up the site for the first time you’ll be asked to sign in or sign up. Once you log in you’ll be greeted by a vaguely Pinterestesque experience that allows you to search, save and share literally millions of design ideas. Pretty cool.

Cymbal – music discovery powered by friends, not algorithms – Music is a big part of my life. I listen to a ton of music and play fiddle and sing in Waiting for Neil. I’m lucky because I get exposed to new music all the time – but it’s no accident. Finding new music and sharing it with friends is something I love doing. Sadly, because I’m not an iOS user I can’t test out Cymbal and the site is pretty light on details. I’ll have to wait to hear what they have to say when they demo.

Trumpit – Real time photo sharing – From iOS only to Android only we have Trumpit, a messaging app based around sharing photos. I love taking and sharing photos but boy are there a lot of options. My phone has more camera and photo apps than you can shake a stick at. I’m constantly trying to winnow down what I have to a usable core. (At the moment, that is Google Camera and Photos – got to love the free unlimited storage.)

Trumpit does have a nice feature – the photos you share with friends appear on their lock screens. This means they are for sure going to see it. I signed up and got a test photo sent to my phone. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly pop up for me as I have another lock screen app installed.

Side Dishes

Spot – Spot seems pretty cool. If you have a parking spot – a real spot that you actually own – you can rent it out to people looking to park. If you need a spot you can search and pay for one with the Spot app. There have been other apps that provide a similar service but a few of them have made it possible for people to hold and rent out public spaces (kind of a no-no). These guys are doing it right and can hopefully ease the headaches of finding parking in congested neighborhoods. Good luck!

LucyBot – APIs should be easy – those are words you don’t usually think of in the same sentence. I know that there’s a big push for more people to learn to code – and that’s a good thing. How many of the mass of coder bootcamp participants are going to take the API plunge is another story. To the extent that people do, LucyBot does seem to make sense. The site includes a gallery of APIs (including, coincidentally, Random Users, which features a bunch of my 1000faces images) and a way for you to add your own API to the site.

One bone I have to pick with the site – and this is only because I unexpectedly found some of my own images made available through it – is the fact that it doesn’t preserve or present the copyright associated with the content. My images, for example, are offered under Creative Commons attribution/non-commercial/share alike. As LucyBot is set up someone using the Random User API would be unaware of this and could easily fall afoul of my pretty easy copyright requirements. Hopefully the team will address this concern.

opportunitySPACE –  – A new marketplace for under-valued land and buildings – this appears to be a neat little site for matching those with “real estate liabilities” with those looking for “undervalued real estate.” Much of the focus seems to be on helping governments offload land or properties. I tried to check it out but it turns out there were no properties in Boston (one of the geographies included on the site).

There were other properties available in other cities though, but I’ll be honest, I am totally not the market for this site. One of the properties listed is the space under the Route 95/Braga Bridge in Fall River. It’s an infra-space program. The fact that would have to find out what an infra-space program is probably means I’m not going to be doing one any time soon. If you do know what that means then the State of Massachusetts might have (the space under) a bridge to sell you. 

JustReachOut – Find journalists. Prefect your pitch. Reach out and get press. – Maybe it’s because I’m a PR person, but I don’t really get this site. When I want to find out which reporters have written about a topic I use this free tool – Google – that does a pretty nice job. JRO offers more than a way to find reporters though; it also provides a way to reach out to them from the site. That’s cool. I’d be curious to hear how effect this approach is.

Fastcloud –  – Build and Manage Enterprise Applications in the Cloud – this reminded me a little of LucyBot – but writ large. You can build apps wicked fast, work with team members easily and have what you build run on any device. It also integrates a ton of popular sources like Salesforce, GitHub, Amazon Web Services and more. Since I’m neither an enterprise nor a cloud developer it’s tough for me to judge what Fastcloud is all about but it seems cool.

Spatterit – Leave your mark. Not your profile. – Describing itself as a “virtual billboard” Spatter lets you post and comment on the things happening around you in the real world. I installed the app and had a look at the ways people were using it. I see that there was a 5K race in the Newton Highlands on 6/14, a Free Brady Pub Run on 5/24 and a lot of posts on Newton Educators. Personally, I could find little rhyme or reason to the posts and many were promoting things long in the past. The idea of locally-based content is a good one but I found the Spatter approach confusing and not particularly engaging.

Realtime Brackets – Update your bracket all tourney – I’ve never been a big March Madness guy but I know a ton of people who are. RTB promises to help follow the tournament by keeping the brackets live and updated in real time. OK. I guess that’s cool. 

Promposal — The Crazy Cost of Getting a Prom Date

Prom season is just winding down and across the country parents are still trying to lift their jaws off the floor due to the costs of this annual rite of spring. The good news is that costs have come down when compared with recent years but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still high. At a meeting earlier this month, the CEO of a company told me his daughter wanted $100 to have her makeup done for her junior prom!

One of the notable trends of this year’s prom season — and one that is attracting attention and dollars is the promposal — elaborate invitations to be someone’s prom date. The promposal isn’t exactly new; The Washington Post published a history of the promposal last year, which traces its roots to Dallas in 2001. This year, though, things have gone to a whole new level. Press coverage of the phenomenon has exploded, MTV produced “Promposal Mania” (a two-day “celebration of prom,” and the lengths kids are willing to go beggar belief. Here are just a few examples of notable promposals from this year’s prom season:

Creating these promposals (or being bailed out after the fact) doesn’t come cheap. According to Visa’s recently released 2015 Prom Survey, promposals consume more than 30% of the overall prom budget:

While kids and parents are spending more and more for promposals, the ways the idea is being discussed though traditional and social media is also notable. In looking at social media mentions of promposals between May 10 and 18, they are dwarfed by mentions of prom in general.

One of the things that makes this relative representation of promposal in social media interesting is the strong showing of Twitter, which accounted for more than 90% of the mentions.

These numbers paint a very different picture of teen social media use than the one provided in Pew’s recently released “Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015.” According to that research, the percentage of teens reporting which social media channels they use looks like this:

• Facebook — 71%
• Instagram — 52%
• Twitter — 33%
• Tumblr — 14%

Overall coverage of promposal on the Web (excluding Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr) dwarfs the social discussion. Over the same nine-day period mentioned above, promposal appeared more than 6,000 times on the Web vs. fewer than 600 in all the social channels combined:

This is a very stark — and in some ways unexpected — difference. Given that teens are the ones participating in promposals, you might expect they would be driving the conversation. That isn’t the case. Most of the media coverage is focused on highlighting examples of outlandish, illegal or cute promposals.

That isn’t to say there isn’t plenty of social media activity around promposals. There are two promposal-focused Twitter accounts: The Promposal, with almost 25,000 followers but posts that are few and far between and Promposals, with more than 250,000 followers and posts that aren’t all promposal focused (or safe for work). The #promposal2k15 hashtag also features a nice selection of social content around the concept.

While brands and retailers might want to see some of the promposal spending (Visa puts the average spend at $324), few are actively promoting themselves, their products or their services through social channels. In looking at the social media channels for more than 100 mall-based retailers (The Brea Mall in Brea, Calif. was used to provide a sample), only three — Brighton Collectables, Taco Bell and Things Remembered — featured mentions of promposal.

Given the amount being spent, the volume of press coverage and the reach of social, promposals seem like a natural fit for teen-focused brands. Few took advantage of the opportunity in 2015. Perhaps more will do so in 2016.

Originally published at www.mediapost.com.

It’s Time To Engage Teens In More Positive Ways

I recently attended an event at MIT, “Coming of Age in Dystopia: The Darkness of Young Adult Fiction,” that looked at the dark world of teen fiction. It was a panel discussion that featured moderator Marah Gubar, a professor of literature at MIT; Kenneth Kidd, a University of Florida professor who focuses on children’s literature and Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue. It was an interesting talk that highlighted the impact media can have on teens; as well as the responsibility of those who engage teens, through media or otherwise.

The discussion started with a reference to “Darkness Too Visible,” a 2011Wall Street Journal article by Meghan Cox Gurdon on the nature of young adult fiction. Almost four years after it appeared, it still evoked a strong response from Cashore. She and Kidd touched on the issue of censorship by parents, teachers and librarians, with Cashore saying such attempts demonstrated adults’ desire to avoid difficult issues.

What troubled me most about the event was an apparent double standard at play. Cashore seemed happy to recount the positive messages she receives from young readers who can identify and find strength through her characters, but spoke with derision of letters she receives from adults chastising her for the sex in her novels.

Frankly, I have no issue with sex but there are parts of young adult literature that I find problematic. These are around destructive behaviors that are either glorified or glossed over. For example, the book Willow came up during the event. It’s about a teen girl who becomes involved with self-harm and tells only her boyfriend. They don’t seek any adult support and it seemed irresponsible to leave kids with the message they can cope with this type of thing on their own.

While none of the panelists were familiar with the book, Cashore offered two defenses. The first was that different readers will take different things from a book and the second was that she believes this writing is not necessarily meant to be instructive. That second point is the one that bears consideration.

Those who create content for teens must be aware that their audience is constantly seeking direction and validation. Whether intentional or not, teens will take lessons from content they’re exposed to. Some will find positive messages and meaning in media and others will gravitate toward darker signals.

As new content and distribution channels have become available, the ability to curate content aimed at young people has diminished. Teenage boys no longer need to face the judgmental gaze of a convenience store clerk if they want pornography. Young girls, via the Internet, can be exposed to more information on a range of diseases and disorders than ever before. The MIT panel, for example, brought up Wintergirls on the topic of anorexia, which some critics described as “an instruction book for how to be anorexic.”

The new reality of unfiltered exposure to content can have serious consequences for teens; whether it’s a dramatic increase in eating disorders or kids deciding to leave home to join ISIS. The media genie is not something that can be put back into the bottle. So what can be done to engage teens in more positive ways?

• Recognize that the media influences teens. To pretend otherwise is to play a dangerous game. If you are developing digital experiences for kids — even if fun and frothy — your audience may latch onto things in unintended ways.
• Create opportunities for positive experiences. Digital media has teens and kids in its thrall, and that affinity can be used to expose these audiences to their potential and big ideas. It may not be easy but it is worth considering. John and Hank Green — and the whole “nerd fighter” movement — do this really effectively.
• Cynicism is part of teen life but there should also be room for affirmation. Always’ “Like a Girl” Super Bowl spot is a great example of this being done well.

The teenage years may well be dark and difficult ones for most kids. Dwelling on the dystopian aspects of life does little to alleviate the challenges teens face and, in some cases, exacerbates those challenges. Marketers are not going to solve the problems of the still nascent world of digital media but if they are more mindful they can avoid making a difficult situation worse.

Originally published at www.mediapost.com.

Anonymity And Privacy

When it comes to connecting and communicating, there’s no shortage of choices available to teenagers (and the rest of us). How these different options work and impact the way teens communicate is worth exploring. There are three camps when it comes to social and messaging apps: private, semi-private and anonymous.

Anonymous apps, like Whisper or Yik Yak, offer consequence-free communication for posters. Names aren’t used and many of these apps don’t collect phone number, email addresses or other personal information. Of course, just because the sender’s name isn’t used doesn’t mean names are missing all together. You can frequently find people named in posts and rarely in a positive way.

This has had consequences on the perception of these apps. Yik Yak, for example, detects when someone is near a middle school or high school (it’s intended for 17+) and won’t display posts or allow them to be made. This is likely due to some of the concerns around bullying and threats of violence.

Private social/messaging apps like Facebook and iMessage are easier to understand. Even if they don’t use real names, these apps are all about individuals and groups connecting with each other. These treat identity and privacy in different ways. Some use real names, others use user names. Some store messages on servers, others do not. Some keep content indefinitely while others let it evaporate after a time.

Finally, there are semi-private apps like Instagram, Kik and Tango where posts and profiles may be public but conversations are not. These apps can also allow information to be viewed and shared in ways the poster might not have originally anticipated.

All three types of apps have their place but one interesting issue affecting all of them is the conflation of anonymity and privacy. I decided to get some other perspectives on this issue so asked people involved with app development, marketing and advertising for their thoughts:

“Open and productive communications are impossible when one party is hiding behind the armor of anonymity. Consider the difference between driving and walking. No one swears at strangers as they pass on the sidewalk, but it’s rampant when we’re behind the wheel. In digital communications anonymity can be harmful to brands and individuals alike whereas private, or even semi-private communications, offer a nice alternative to the wide exposure of public comments. Think Angie’s List reviews as opposed to anonymous blog comments from Internet trolls.” — Beth Monaghan, principal, InkHouse Media

“Teens have flocked to apps like Snapchat and Yik Yak; but as we know, their claims of security and privacy are not exactly watertight. This is because messages sent using those services are stored on servers, meaning they can be — and have been — compromised. This can be a problem for teens since they are notorious for acting before they think — so their need for assured privacy is almost a safety net — as is the ability to delete a regrettable text message after the fact.” — Greg Parker, founder of Raketu, creator of the RakEM app

“Teens are an expressive crowd and they crave public gratification, whether its favorites/likes, comments or just having a photo added to a stream. We’ve discovered it’s best to offer multiple communications layers — anonymous when needed, private when they want to share with a friend, and public when they can get larger feedback.” — William Agush, founder of Shuttersong

“Anonymity means not being accountable for what you say — and usually not controlling who hears or reads it. Privacy, on the other hand, not only gives you control over who hears what you say but also makes you accountable for it. Young people should consider whether they are willing to be accountable for what they share on anonymous apps — sometimes posting is the brave thing to do, and sometimes it’s just the opposite.” — Jenny Mirken, founder of Jet

“Effective communication often comes down to truth and honesty. If you want the public to view your comments as truth, then be honest about who you are. If the truth is not appropriate for public consumption, keep it private. And, in those instances when anonymity can help uncover the truth (market research, for instance), only share it with those who need to know.” — Jeff Freedman, CEO, Small Army

The points about accountability and honesty ring true. For teens — or anyone — to communicate there needs to be some knowledge of who is on the other side of the screen. Sure, it can be liberating to say whatever is on your mind without worrying about the consequences but can it be the basis for a two-way conversation?

For brands that want to establish meaningful connections with teenage customers, it’s hard to imagine the anonymous route being at all effective since anonymity by its very nature negates the benefit of the brand. Private or semi-private channels make more sense and there are great examples appearing every day. To be successful, keep the channels of communication clear, open and honest — and for goodness sake, don’t confuse privacy with anonymity.

Originally published at www.mediapost.com.

Engaging Teens Through Music

Think back to your own teen years. Maybe it was not long ago. Maybe it was decades ago. What did you love when you were young? Cars? Video games? Movies? Dancing? Sports? Some of you probably liked some of those things but there is one thing pretty much every teen loves and that’s music. Music holds a special place in everyone’s heart and memory. A song from a long ago summer can bring back memories in a way few other things can match. Listening to and loving music is part and parcel of being a teen.

For some kids, music is about more than listening though. They want to play. That’s where there are opportunities for you to engage with teens. Now this might be a little self-serving (but probably not) but here goes.

I have two teenagers. My daughter, whom I’ll call Z, loves playing rock and roll. She listens to a lot of punk rock (classic and modern), hard rock, metal, screamo, emo and more. Finding an opportunity to play was a challenge. A few of her friends are musicians but not into rock, and while there were some kids at school, actually coordinating things was easier said than done. It was a problem.

That changed a few years ago when someone introduced her to PluggedIn, a band program aimed at teens. PluggedIn organizes kids into bands based on the music they’re into, has a building that is chuck full of practice spaces, has adults who mentor the kids and maintains a weekly rehearsal schedule. It’s all pretty turnkey.

Every week my wife or I drive Z to her practice and pick her up when it’s over. Sometimes this is inconvenient. Sometimes there are things she’d rather be doing on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes, when she recounts her practice sessions, I wonder what they’re actually doing. Any doubts, though, are erased at their concerts.

A few weekends ago was their show. Z played in two bands, one on Saturday night and the other on Sunday afternoon. I’m not going to lie; there was some tragically terrible musicianship on display. But that didn’t matter, because there was plenty of good music too. What was also on display was a whole lot of teens doing something they really loved. When Z went up on stage and sang three songs with one of her bands I was blown away. It literally brought tears to my eyes.

As I looked at the audience and at the kids on stage and at the ones waiting in the wings, I saw people transported by the opportunity to make and enjoy music. There are programs like PluggedIn all over the country. There’s Camp Jam, School of Rock, Girls Rock and Seattle Teen Music to name just a few.

As budgets for the arts in public schools tighten, teens and their parents are turning to these programs as an outlet for expression and community. What I didn’t see at the PluggedIn concert — and here is where there’s an opportunity for marketers — was anyone sponsoring the program. It seemed crazy to me that there could be a group of 200 kids in one program in one community that was demonstrating loud and clear a really strong and specific interest without a business recognizing the opportunity to connect. It seems a shame that more marketers aren’t recognizing the potential of supporting kids in exploring a passion, especially one as strong as rock and roll.

Originally published at www.mediapost.com.

Balancing Your Media Diet

When I was a kid we had the food pyramid. It was designed to help people think about the right mix of foods for a healthy diet. The plate has replaced the pyramid but the idea is the same — you need to be mindful about what you put into your body in order to stay healthy.

The same thing is true for what you put into your head. The more varied the information you consume, the more connections you’ll be able to make between issues and ideas. The more diverse your information diet, the more likely you’ll be able to discover insights that can prompt new ideas and ways of solving problems.

Here’s one example. A few weeks ago, for reasons I can’t explain, I watchedNuclear 101: How Nuclear Bombs Work, Part 1, on YouTube. It was a lecture by Matthew Bunn, associate professor of public policy at Harvard. For years nuclear history has been an interest but the science is tough. Bunn made it very accessible.

He described the problem of achieving fission in a sub-critical mass. He explained that there are three solutions: add more material, reflect neutrons back in to the material, or compress the material. It made sense to me and it apparently lodged someplace in my head.

A few days later I was talking with a client. She was describing the challenge of more effectively using her global communication teams. Simply adding more money wasn’t the answer, she said. And then I remembered the lecture. Her teams, I said, were like the atoms in a sub-critical mass. Money was akin to neutrons. Adding more could help, but so would using consistent messages and materials (similar to reflection) and better coordination with the regions (similar to compression). It was an apt analogy and led to a more focused discussion on how to implement the approach.

With that example in mind, here is a way to think about media consumption in a way that can help broaden your mind when it comes to the events and issues of the day. In the world of MyPlate, there are five food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins and dairy. Applying this notion to media consumption, we could also think of five categories: foundation, expansion, practical, inspirational and indulgent.

Here’s what they mean:

• Foundation is the basic information needed to put things into context. It’s the news, history, literature and anything else that provides a fundamental view of the world.
• Expansion is information or ideas that you aren’t familiar with or don’t agree with. The news falls into this category, so can a lot of other things, such as vides (like the one mentioned above), topic-specific publications or partisan Web sites. Consuming this content can take discipline.
• Practical is information that helps you do what needs to be done. Understanding a clients business or what a particular reporter is writing about are examples.
• Inspirational is media that makes you feel good and gives you space to recharge and reflect. It can be music, art or anything else that works for you.
• Indulgent is information that is more a guilty pleasure than anything else. For some it might be reality TV, for others talk radio, for me, it’s video games.

Too much of anything isn’t healthy so it’s important to come up with a mix that’s right for you. For most people it’s easy to spend time with practical and indulgent media. It’s easy to justify it — the practical stuff can help you get your job done and the indulgent stuff is a necessary respite if you’ve been over-taxing the old grey matter.

Media isn’t like food though. You can’t measure it consistently in terms of calories. Does a copy of US Magazine equal two episodes of Parks & Rec? Is binge watching Breaking Bad the same as plowing through three weeks worth of the Sunday Styles section? And what should you do about that stack of ten unread New Yorkers? It’s pretty hard to say.

The important thing is to mix things up. It’s easy to get into media ruts and fall back to familiar formats or content. It’s also easy to stick with popular media. This gives you plenty of fodder for water cooler conversations but if everyone is consuming the same content they’ll also likely come up with the same ideas and observations.

It’s also important to recognize that the right media mix will vary from person-to-person and over a lifetime. A middle schooler will have a far different media profile than a veterinarian, who will likely be consuming different content than an airline pilot. While different people need to engage with different media, it’s important that they don’t isolate themselves in their own media universe.

This has been a big concern when it comes to political media. There has been an assumption that many people only consumed media that supported their point of view. Thankfully, according to a recent story in the New York Times, that isn’t the case. According to the story, what people are actually observed consuming differs — and if far more diverse — from what they report consuming. This is a hopeful sign.

Achieving a healthy media mix isn’t something that should be left to chance. As a first step, why not begin tracking what you read, watch, listen to and play? Do it for a week and assess your media diet. Are you watching way more TV than you meant to? Have you whiled away untold hours playing FIFA 15? Be honest with yourself. Then push yourself the find more balance.

As a communications professional, not only will this give you a glimpse into the actual media you consume, but it will also help broaden that mix, which will expose you to new ideas, help you make new connections and allow you to deliver new insights to colleagues and clients.

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Originally published at www.inkhouse.net.

Make Time For Game Time

A new class of media channels is creating vast new audiences of deeply engaged young viewers. They are also blurring the line between creators and consumers. While some marketers recognize the potential of these platforms, there is more that can be done.

Twitch, Major League Gaming and Steam have made it possible for gamers to share their skills and connect with other gamers. These services have made gaming a spectator activity that has become wildly popular. While teen engagement through traditional media channels may have advertisers and marketers reaching for their Maalox, participation in these new platforms is going through the roof. Consider these facts:

• Twitch has 100 million monthly viewers and over one million gamers streaming their sessions live
• In 2013, MLG compared viewership for its Pro Circuit Championship with the NCAA March Madness Tournament Video Live viewership: MLG had 54 million hours of video consumed vs. just 14 million for the NCAA
• On Jan. 4 of this year, steam saw its highest number of concurrent users:8.5 million; NBC was the highest rated network for the week ending Jan. 4– with 7.3 million viewers

These are big, big numbers and they point to a level of engagement between streamers and viewers that other media channels can’t approach or replicate. But what does this engagement look like? What are these millions of streamers and viewers doing for all of these millions of monthly hours? These are the basic activities:

• Play — there’s got to be someone streaming their gameplay for this to work and so it starts with the gamer. Their game screen is the core of the experience. As they play the gamer is visible, either in a small pop-out box or green-screened in one of the corners.
• Narrate — as they play, most streamers are talking — mostly about the game they are playing, the opponents they are facing, the system they are using, etc.
• Interact — viewers can talk to each other via chat and with the streamer. Sometimes there may be a Twitter feed on the screen, sometimes a chat box. Either way, there is a lot of flow across the screen.

It can be a pretty busy experience for the uninitiated. What is missing from this cacophonous space is any meaningful marketing. What there is typically takes the form of video before a stream launches or a site takeover (“The Lazarus Effect” owned the MLG screen when I wrote this). There are also brands that sponsor specific teams or players. Little evidence of that appears in the actual stream experience though and that’s where the action is.

Figuring out how to connect with the audience is a tricky business and one that needs to be handled with some sensitivity. As was the case with social media when it first appeared on the scene, brands need to learn the rules and norms of these channels before barging in. Here are a few ideas for getting a handle on the world of streaming gaming:

• Watch — have someone spend time simply observing what is happening, learning the language that is used, understanding how interactions take place in the environment.
• Play — this is a tough job, but if you want to connect with this audience, someone is going to have to be a gamer. Why?
• Stream — This is why you need a gamer. Ideally, you want people to want to watch you. Your brand can become a destination for this audience if you can present a personality that they want to connect with. A funny, affable, skilled player and voice is key.

Obviously, this type of thing isn’t appropriate for every brand; but for technology companies, game publishers, snacks and soft drinks, and entertainment properties this approach could make sense. Yet as was the case with the early days of social, brands wanting to participate in this channel need to be authentic, committed and thick-skinned (there’s no shortage of trash talking, trolling and inappropriate banter here).

A brand that is able to create a strong personality and following within the new realm of streaming gaming will have a direct channel to a large and growing audience in a way that no other channel currently offers. Seriously, make time for game time.

Originally published at www.mediapost.com.

Pssst, it’s almost time for WebInno44 . . .

A new year and a host of new companies hoping to make it big at WebInno. Things kick off on January 12^th with WebInno44. As usual, the festivities will begin at 6:30 at the Royal Sonnesta in comfortable Kendall Square. Here’s my preview of the companies that will be on hand.

Main Dishes

Flyp – Get Multiple Numbers on your Smartphone – There’s not much to see on the Flyp site yet, just the ability to request an invite and a link to a video about the service—which I watched. Basically, Flyp lets you set up multiple phone numbers on a single device, just like their tag line says. They offer a number of reasons you might want to do this – separate numbers for friends or work or creeps you don’t really want to hear from. I guess that makes sense. It does seem like this is something you could do on your own, with Google Voice or Skype. Of course that means having multiple accounts to manage, with different passwords, prompts, etc.

Speaking of which, it is really annoying that every phone I use – home (yeah, I still have one, much to my chagrin), cell and office – uses different keys to skip or delete or save a message; and every company I call uses some different variation of # or * or 0 to bypass voice prompts. Can’t there be a standard? What’s the value or benefit of every carrier or company using their own proprietary approach. Annoying. If Flyp helps deal with that I’m a believer.

Rocketboard – On its face Rocketboard seems like something that’s been done. Essentially it allows you to broadcast (or record) the contents of a whiteboard in real time. One might imagine being able to do this with a Webcam or smartphone and the truth is you can. In fact, Rocketboard uses your smartphone to capture the content on your whiteboard.

If you’re wondering, “why would I need this if I have a phone,” Rocketboard appears to have a couple of nice bells and whistles that take it beyond those more rudimentary approaches. Here are a few of them:

• By drawing triangles on the corners of the board, Rocketboard is able to recognize the dimensions of the board and correct for the angle and aspect ratio. That means a viewer, instead of seeing a skewed view gets a nice clean rectangle.
• Rocketboard is smart enough to omit the person working on the whiteboard from the video. It does this by recommending that the person step away from the board from time-to-time to allow the system to capture the changes.
• It is able to capture still images of the board. Again, this may seem basic but Rocketboard appears to make it really easy. By blocking the camera on your phone for a moment it takes a photo.

All of the files can be made available to those participating in the meeting in real time or as a video to be watched after the fact. It is kind of cool but I’m not sure if it’s the sine qua non of cool office stuff. Maybe Monday will prove me wrong.

Upward Labs – Upward Labs makes it “easy for brands to create and manage their own brand ambassador programs.” I don’t think anyone would argue with the premise here. Brands clearly love it when customers are willing to give them positive word of mouth or social media buzz. In fact, brands have been working with partners like BzzAgent since 2001. I’m not 100 percent sure how what Upward does differs from BzzAgent. Perhaps it’s less expensive, easier to use, fundamentally better? That would be my first question to the folks at Upward Labs and hopefully I’ll have a chance to ask it on Monday night.

 

Side Dishes

Allclasses – Find the best online classes, or search locally – People are mad about MOOCs these days, and with good reason. You can learn so much from so many sources. Whether you’re just curious about something or are actively studying, there’s content or courseware out there somewhere. Allclasses is a terrific clearinghouse of pretty much any online course you can imagine from MIT Open Courseware to Udemy to Linda Online to a million others.

What’s even cooler is that you can find local in-person classes as well. I searched for photography and got a list of more than 3,000 classes. Overwhelming, right? It would be if Allclasses didn’t have some great filtering tools. You can sort results by online or in-person only, price, provide, category, start time and more. It’s all pretty slick and makes Allclasses feel like the top of the class for WebInno44.

BriefMe – What the World is Reading Now – I’m going to be a little snide here, but it’s because I like the idea of BriefMe. First of all, BriefMe is a news aggregator. There are plenty of them out there but this one is based on what people are posting or tweeting about all over the world. Now a bone – BriefMe claims to be the first news-ranking app “powered by people. Instead of relying on the judgment of an editorial team, our editor is an algorithm . . .” Let me just clear something up for everyone: editorial teams are made up of people, algorithms are not.

A news service that delivers “the most popular news articles” is going to miss out on less popular, but possibly more important news. The fact that Kim Kardashian’s butt broke the Internet was a popular story but not necessarily a very important one. Boko Haram’s attacks in Nigeria is important news but not necessarily popular. This is why there are editorial teams in the first place, to help identify and ensure coverage of important topics rather than just fun and popular ones.

Of course I am saying this without actually having tried the BriefMe app. I have signed up for it though and hope to have a chance to check it out.

Connections – Craft Reliable Relationships – That’s a pretty expansive claim for an app to make. What exactly is a reliable relationship? A friend that keeps their word; one that shows up on time? It seems like that’s something the other person is responsible for, how is an app meant to alter someone else’s behavior to make them more reliable? Connections isn’t that ambitious. It basically allows you to annotate and tag your contacts. That’s cool. But not that cool.

HomeBinder – A Homeowner’s Best Friend – Now this is something I can get my head around. I am a homeowner and if there’s one thing my wife and I have learned it that it’s a pain in the butt. Just the other day, it was 9 degrees out and we woke up to a furnace that wasn’t working. Nice. Fortunately, when we opened it up to figure out what was wrong there was a big red “reset” button. I pushed it and the problem was solved. Not everything is so simple and HomeBinder seems like a solid way to manage all of the headaches of homeownership.

The site allows you to set up binders for each home you own (or presumably manage I guess). Binders can include all kinds of useful information – the contractors you use, the rooms in your house, the paints on your walls, your appliances and more. That’s pretty cool. My wife is really good about keeping records of everything but sometimes finding this or that receipt or document is a challenge. HomeBinder would make the process much easier.

HomeBinder features both a free (intended for renters) and paid version ($49 per year and targeted at homeowners). The paid version has a number of additional features, including the ability to upload photos, receive recall notifications and tax reports. Pretty neat. The one thing I don’t see on the site is any mention of an app but the mobile site seems pretty nice. A big thumbs up for HomeBinder.

Legal Hero – Law Done Better – Not only am I a homeowner, but I am also someone who has had to employ the services of a lawyer on a somewhat regular basis. Years ago Wendy and I needed to write our wills and we used some software or Website that I can’t even recall anymore. Years later, when kids, special needs and more serious death planning (not that it will happen any time soon I hope) our legal needs became more complex. Legal Hero seems sit somewhere between DIY and going all in.

Basically, Legal Hero is a marketplace to connect people with legal needs with a network of lawyers. The site says participating attorneys have an average of 15 years experience and that almost all of them have attended at top 100 law school. Lawyers are able to register on the site by applying to be a part of the network. Once accepted, a lawyer will opt into the types of projects they want to work on. At that point, people like me will reach out looking for help solving a legal issue.

Now Legal Hero isn’t actually designed to help write wills or stuff like that. The site has a number of projects you can select from, most of which are related to business needs. The projects include things like starting a business, managing a team and protecting your brand. The site walks you though some simple steps to understand exactly what you need. For example, if you say you’re looking for help protecting your brand, you get additional options: trademark registration, copyright registration and confidentiality agreements. Selecting one of these branches you further to get to the specific service you’re looking for. In the case of confidentiality agreements, to have one prepared will cost you $375, which includes a consultation and customized agreement.

At this point it’s time to select your lawyer, which is done based on your location. I decided not to take this step because I don’t want to get emails but it made sense to me. As with almost any industry, the marketplace model here makes a lot of sense. It will be interesting to see how Legal Hero evolves.

JessMeetKen – Meet Great Guys Other Women Have Recommended – Hmmmm. Maybe there are situations where marketplaces don’t work. JMK is targeted to women. The idea is that if you know a guy but you’re attached or he’s not right in some way you can add him to the site and women can check him out and ask you for the skinny. I can see how this might be a good idea, you get the lowdown on someone that looks like they might be a fit, but I wonder how guys will feel about being on the site?

Skit! – My kids love making absurd videos with and about their friends, fandoms and interests. They spend a fair amount of time looking for tools to use, gathering their content and editing things together. I love it. Most of what they make makes zero sense but they’re having fun and learning skills. Skit! is an attempt to make that process easier. I guess that’s cool but part of me likes it that what they’re doing isn’t easy. I like it that it takes time and effort to come up with something. Like I said, most of it makes no sense but they made it. Skit seems to take some of the effort out of the equation and that might not be a good thing. If I had more time today I’d make a skit, sadly I don’t. Maybe tomorrow.

SplitNGo – Benefits for Restaurants – This is a neat little payment system for restaurants. When the meal is over, people pull out their phone to view their bill. They can either settle up via the phone or with a card or cash. If they pay with SplitNGo their account is cleared and the waiter notified so they can swing by to say “thanks.” The app promises to solve “guests #1 problem,” and the site explains that waiting can turn an excellent experience into a poor one. That’s true, but to be honest, the wait that’s really annoying is long before the bill comes: waiting for drinks, waiting for orders to be taken and food to be delivered are all more annoying than waiting to pay. But that’s just me.

Weft – Tracking and Control System – For the second time in recent WebInno history we have a hardware product. This one is pretty cool. Weft devices are small and are meant to be affixed to cargo so it can be tracked and monitored. Not only does Weft let you see where an item is but it also lets you know the conditions it is traveling though by monitoring things like temperature, humidity, etc. Cool.

Weft integrates with all your favorite ERP and CRM systems, which means all the data collected by Weft is automatically at your fingertips when and where you need it. That’s also pretty cool. Finally (as if everything else wasn’t enough!), Weft is able to look at real time and historical data for all shipments being tracked by the platform. Magically, Weft can use this information to identify problems and bottlenecks so shippers can update their planned routes and schedules to keep performance in tip-top shape. Weft actually makes me wish I had a few containers to ship.

Whovoo – When you want to be absolutely, positively private and secret – OK, let me just say that there is NOTHING in this digital world of ours that is positively private and secret. That being said, Whovoo is trying to make sharing a little safer. I’m not really clear on who this is intended for. If I want to send a picture of my dog I’m not that worried about who sees it. The cute look and feel of the app (which I have not tried since I am on Android) makes it seem kind of for kids, but the FAQ make it clear it’s only for people over 13.

Once I started looking at the FAQ I got a little more confused. For example, one question asks: “Does Whovoo store my private photos and messages on its servers?” The answer is “no.” A few questions later we see, “Where are Whoots [their term for an encrypted photo and message inside a Whovoo envelope] physically stored?” As it turns out, these are stored on Whoot’s servers until they expire. That seems to contradict the first answer. There’s a bit of nuance in that your stuff isn’t stored “unencrypted” but it is nevertheless stored on their servers.

There’s a ton of interesting stuff happening in the messaging space these days and Whovoo might be a neat addition to the mix. I’ll wait to see but won’t hold my breath.

 

So that’s it from me. There’s a ton of neat looking companies lined up for this edition of WebInno and I’m looking forward to checking them out. Hope to see you there!