Projection mapping is the future of events and activation visuals. Leveraging on multiple LED projections and superior design mapping we are now able to create 3D interpretations from a flat 2D surface. Paired with other technologies like motion sensor, face tracking and custom optical flow. installation art is now brought to a whole new level beyond imagination.

Nokia Ovi Maps - Interactive Projection Mapping from seeper on Vimeo.

Have you ever heard about the story of a foolish Scottish boy who spent every single cent of his $500 inheritance from his deceased father on a broken grocery store?
Many shook their heads. Some mocked at his fate. Others scoffed at the idea of an inexperienced 14-year-old farm boy running a grocery store in the town of Kilmarnock. Undaunted, this boy turned his foolishness into bravery.
He kept walking.
That was his story. A beautiful one that established the heritage of one of the most recognized brand in the world – Johnnie Walker. A whisky brand famed for its big, bold, layered tastes that are inspired by John Walker’s son, Alexander, who experimented with applying tea blending techniques to the art of whisky blending. He gave us the distinctive smoky, layered flavours we recognize today as Johnnie Walker.
Stories like these birth the soul of a brand. And people tell these stories generation after generation. They transform them along the way. Injecting them with opinions and experiences. Like folklores, which still exist today and will exist forever. Why? Because they seduce the heart. They resonate with a common belief or passion that sits deeply rooted within our souls.
So how do we craft stories that can connect emotionally?
1.) Resonate with a common passion point
Forget conventional marketing segmentations. Disregard demographics, psychographics, geography, etc. People come together because of a common passion. To form a community and establish emotional relationships with one another. Nike Plus focused on one community: runners. They created engaging ideas and started conversations purely about running. Nothing else. Soon they found the world running along with them.

2.) Make interesting facts more interesting
If I say “Approximately 130 million bottles of Johnnie Walker Red Label is sold in over 120 countries every year,” you will probably go “so what?” However, if I rephrase that to “An average of 5 bottles of Johnnie Walker Red Label is consumed every second,” you will probably be more impressed. Narrating stories in a context that your audience can relate to helps stimulate the imagination.

3.) Paint a picture
Complex stories can be described vividly and emotively with a single image. National Geographic photographer, Steve McCurry shot a portrait of an Afghanistan girl in a Pakistan refugee camp in 1984. It captured deep yet mixed emotions within her. And it became a worldwide sensation. 17 years later, Steve McCurry went on a search for her because her image lives on in his memory. Strong visuals are unforgettable.

In the age of digitalization where 15 petabytes of data are created every day, companies are adopting data visualization techniques to help consumers digest information better. Last year, the US government launched www.recovery.gov to provide easy access to data related to the Recovery Act, which allows for the reporting of potential fraud, waste and abuse. The interactive data mapping helped people better understand the massive amount of information and complexities pertaining to Recovery funds and projects.

4.) Find the right moment
I recall piloting a tasting session aimed at teaching consumers how to bring out the flavours of an alcoholic beverage. We had everything right. An interactive tasting tool, beautiful female promoters, attractive giveaways, and free booze for all. The results weren’t great. We were there at the wrong time. We intruded into people’s spaces and tried to manufacture their behaviour instead of enhancing their experience with our offering. Stories engage better when introduced at the right moment. Tell a story only when people are ready to listen. And only at the right moment will brand experiences be enhanced.

5.) Stir the senses
A well thought-out multisensory environment can provide an experience that is immersive and personal. New Balance launched its first full experiential store in China that brings consumers on a journey of the brand’s rich past, present and future. Audio, visual and olfactory experiences add to the store’s unique character. The smell of natural wood, the comforting touch of leather, and a subtle fragrance actually sold more pairs of shoes at a higher premium as compared to stores with a conventional setting.

6.) Invite and involve your audience
In 2006, Pepsi fired up conversations with one of its most successful Internet advertising campaign in China. They invited consumers to write screenplays for the hugely popular singer-songwriter, Jay Chou. By choosing the right spokesperson consumers can connect to and leveraging the passion point of music, Pepsi pushed the boundaries further by making the inaccessible, accessible. Inviting millions of once passive viewers to participate in something larger than life, fulfil their own fantasies and make a difference.

Stories are an emotional force to be reckoned with. They make your brand alluring and most importantly, human. Craft it well and you will move your consumers. Just like Johnnie Walker, touching millions of people who have embraced the spirit that flows through the veins of the brand.
So what’s your story?

Personal thanks to Selwyn, for editing this.

Today, I’m proud to share a plug-in that will help to make campaign tracking more efficient within Omniture’s s_code.js file ¹. It’s called setCampaignVars. It’s free, it’s easy to use, and — best of all — it’s open source.

Background: Campaign Tracking with Omniture SiteCatalyst
At its simplest level, campaign tracking works this way: the Omniture code reads a value from the URL and saves it as your campaign tracking code. For example, let’s say that I have the following URL:

http://www.my-wonderful-site.com/index.html?cmp=foobar

The Omniture code can be configured to get the campaign tracking code whenever it sees the “cmp” query parameter in the URL. In this example, it will save foobar as the tracking code.

But Omniture recommends that campaign tracking doesn’t stop there. It suggests the following:

• Store the tracking code in an Omniture traffic variable - to report on pageviews, visits, time spent, and similar metrics
• Store the tracking code with your landing page name and enable pathing on this combination - to track how users navigate your site from the landing page

In addition, depending on your requirements, you might also need to

• Make the user’s browser retain the tracking code for a period of time ², regardless of how he subsequently returns to your site.

Campaign Tracking introduces New Problems
To implement the above, your Omniture technical account manager should have provided you with a set of code that you can just copy-and-paste into your s_code.js file, or the file may already contain the code when it was first given to you. That’s all well and good. BUT (and you knew there would be a “but”), that code normally applies for external campaigns only, for example, to track users who enter your site from a paid search campaign.

On the other hand, you may have internal campaigns, e.g. banners within your site, like on your homepage, for certain promotions. You’d want to track these in the same way as external campaigns. (Omniture recommends that you do so too.) But that means you’d have to (a) write the code yourself, or (b) get your account manager (or savvy web developer) to do it for you.

New Problems demand a New Solution: setCampaignVars
Now I give you option (c): setCampaignVars. After adding the plug-in to your s_code.js file, you will be able to:

1. Get the (external or internal) campaign tracking code from your URL
2. Store the tracking code in both traffic and conversion variables
3. Store the tracking code+landing page combo as a traffic variable for pathing (optional), and
4. Retain the tracking code only once for a certain period of time (optional)

Here’s how to use setCampaignVars:

1. Get the file, setCampaignVars.txt
   • Refer to setCampaignVars_maximized.txt for the plug-in’s details and its “maximized” version
2. Copy-and-paste the contents of setCampaignVars.txt into your s_code.js after “PLUGINS SECTION”
3. Make sure your s_code.js contains Omniture’s getQueryParam, getAndPersistValue and getValOnce plug-ins
4. Use setCampaignVars within the s_doPlugins block

Getting Started with setCampaignVars
Here are a few example scenarios to get you started with step 4:

• Save your external campaign tracking code (from the “cmp” URL query) to s.campaign and s.prop1, and expire the tracking code within the same visit
  s.setCampaignVars('cmp','campaign','prop1');
• Save your external campaign tracking code (from the “cmp” URL query) to s.campaign and s.prop1, keep the tracking code for up to 7 days, and enable campaign pathing (using “:” to separate the tracking code from your landing page name) on s.prop2
s.setCampaignVars('cmp','campaign','prop1',7,'prop2',':',s.pageName,true);
• Save your internal campaign tracking code (from the “intcmp” URL query) to s.eVar7 and s.prop7 and retain the code for the next 30 days
  s.setCampaignVars('intcmp','eVar7','prop7',30,,,,true);

Now It’s Your Turn
I’ve used setCampaignVars with great success for a major project. Knowing that it works properly in a production environment, I’m now making it publicly available for the Omniture community to use as well. Hopefully, it makes your lives much simpler, as it did mine.

If you encounter any implementation errors with setCampaignVars, please log it down at the setCampaignVars support section in SourceForge. Or help me fix it ³.

Disclaimer: setCampaignVars is not endorsed, verified or supported by Omniture. Use at your own risk. Also, by using this code, you agree not to hold XM Asia Pacific or any of its employees, both past and present, liable for any data errors and/or loss.

At XM, we’ve had a long and fruitful experience with Omniture, makers of a suite of analytics tools. This ranges from setting up a complete tracking solution to using its data to generate dashboards and reports. And this is our simple gesture of contributing back to the Omniture community.

Footnotes:

1. The “s_code.js” file is a required JavaScript file that performs the guts of web tracking for Omniture’s tools.
2. The retention period for your campaign tracking code is measured in days. Ideally, it should match your campaign variable’s setting within your report suite’s Administration section.
3. setCampaignVars is entirely open source and licensed under the GNU General Public Licence v3.

This entry was written by Balasingam-Chow Yu Hui. He has worked as a Marketing Analyst at XM Asia Pacific since 2006.
You may remember him as author of “What is Web Analytics?” or from within the Singaporean social media circles. When he’s not working on Web Analytics, he can be found analysing the performance of his love life.

It has been quite a while since we last had such a spread. Not a lot, but the weekly TGIF is missed by all.

Happy Weekend!

Let this cool Alice eBook for iPad speak for itself

Most of the iPad apps we’ve seen so far have been along the lines of digital magazine apps. Granimator, a new app by ustwo, refreshingly, looks to make the most of the interactive touch screen and let users be creative with that functionality - rather than simply swiping a screen to get to another “page” (yawn).

The idea behind Granimator is that iPad owners using the app can play around with various graphic and illustrative elements onscreen to create musical wallpapers. ustwo has teamed up with a host of in-demand imagemakers – including Airside, James Joyce, Jon Burgerman and Pete Fowler – to supply graphic and illustrative assets for the app. Each of these collaborator’s Granimator assets will be available in signature artist packs, which will be released in packs of six on an ongoing basis through an in-app shop.

Users can select and drag different graphic elements onscreen to create interesting looking wallpapers. Each element in the composition represents a different sound that can be played by tapping it on the screen. A pinching action can tweak the sound’s pitch, thus enabling you to fine tune your wallpaper composition – both visually and melodically. Once you’re happy with your creation, you’ll be able to save it as iPad or iPhone wallpaper and share it with your friends via Flickr, Twitter and, but of course, a dedicated website at granimator.com

Courtesy of Creative Review

HERE’S a surprising prediction: China will be the world’s biggest tourism destination by 2015. Taleb Rifai, the secretary-general of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), said recently that he expects China to overtake France, which is currently the top-ranked country.

“China is almost there,” Mr Rifai told Xinhua. “It is now the world’s fourth largest destination when it comes to incoming tourists, and the rates of growth are moving so quickly that we think this is a realistic target.”

Mr Rifai’s comments, though referring to 2015, appear to be based on projections that the UNWTO put together for 2020. China had almost 51m arrivals in 2009, including visitors from Hong Kong and Macau—just behind Spain and America, but still some distance from France, which welcomed 78m foreign visitors in 2008. Yet given that the numbers visiting China rose by 40m in the past decade, and the Chinese government shows no sign of losing interest in promoting tourism, it’s not hard to see the basis for the UNWTO’s projection.

This is not, moreover, a question of pure tourism. The UNWTO told me that, in general, these “tourists” actually comprise 50% holidaymakers, 30% visitors to friends and relatives, and 20% business travellers.

Source: The Economist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bk_nqUQ0fc&feature=player_embedded

1.) Its not translation, its localisation
- always use local translators as they have intimate knowledge and understanding of syntax and nuances unique to each country.
- always ask for a few paragraphs of localised samples and get a real consumer to read through (corridor test). Some research spending at the start can yield greater rewards after.

2.) Engage category experts to vet content, and propose terms/phrases unique to that category. If we want to write for the experts, we need to sound like experts.

3.) Recognise country-specific differences within languages
- Hong Kong Traditional Chinese vs. Taiwan Traditional Chinese. Enough said.
- English language messages also need to be localized for countries such as Canada, the UK and Australia. That includes differences in phrasing, such as “ring me” instead of “call me” or “petrol” instead of “gas,” as well as differences in spelling.

4.) Respect Cultural Differences
- US and UK markets tend to use a more aggressive, sales-oriented approach but the style will not play well in other parts of Europe and even in Asia
- No showing of skin pictorially in conservative countries like Middle East; Patriotism and flag imagery may work well in US but not so much in Canada.

5.) A picture says a thousand words
- British customers could tell their advertising photos were of US employees, due to slight differences in clothing, such as the way a tie was knotted
- Caucasian models might not always resonate well with Asian countries, especially Japan/China

https://www.mastercardmoments.com/edm/2010/02/monthly/chs/edm_spring.html

Credit goes to Marketing Sherpa for some of these great points

Brand/digital utility -> providing value and convenience to improve/enrich your consumers’ lifestyles