Saturday

AdAge Crystal Ball 2.0 Revisited

In early 2008 AdAge contacted the top 150 blogs in their Power 150 blog rankings and asked the writers of those blogs to tell AdAge what technology marketers should be paying most attention to in 2008. They called it Crystal Ball 2.0.

Now, here we are a year later; who was right? Who was wrong? Who was ahead of the curve? Over the next few weeks I will share the original predictions, share my thoughts and of course ask for you to chime in with your thoughts and predictions for 2009.

And here we go....

Crystyal Ball 2.0 predictions:

Marie Lena Tupot
Mobile apps. But not in a whiz-bang, over-the-top manner; the sort of incremental mobile apps that make ordinary things even easier, like let you pay back friends on the fly, split the check at restaurants, pre-order your coffee so you can bypass the line at a local café, pay your belated phone bill, donate to your political candidate ... It's the little things that take us by storm.
Adjoke thoughts: Mobile apps definitely saw a rise in adoption both by marketers as well as consumers. Everything from Obama's impressive use of the technology to simple apps such as e-boarding passes, mint.com's genius financial apps, e*trade mobile pro and remember the milk supports that Marie Lena Tupot was someone to listen to in 2008 and I look forward to hearing her predictions for 2009.

Adjoke Mobile App thoughts for 2009: Can 2009 be the year North America embraces the QR code? It should be. The ease of use and benefit to the consumer is remarkable but for them to take-off the devices need to be set-up to support the required functionality. I would love to see every camera enabled phone to be enabled to read QR codes by the end of 2009. A few of my favourite uses of the QR code are:
  1. QR codes share complete recipes where they wouldn't normally be able to fit. Like in print ads and on packaging.
  2. Company Bios, portfolios and more available on a business card.
The iPhone will continue to be the single biggest catalyst for the development and evolution of mobile apps for the foreseable future and as the mobile phone becomes more and more entrenched into our daily life marketers will have an enormous opportunity to connect with consumers. The cellphone will become among others a means to bank, purchase, manage time, keep in touch through social networks and access the internet and email. The marketers that have invested in this technology, learned from their experiences and attracted customers who utilize these apps will find themselves in a wonderful position in a few years when their competitors are playing catch-up.
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