Craig Saper

2012: The Year of Fusion(?)

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:36:00 -0600

Once upon a time, entertainment and advertising were two separate lands. Each land was dynamic, and cool, in its own way, but their denizens rarely commingled. In yet another land, the geeks of technology toiled in isolation on tasks both obscure and unfriendly. And then the winds of innovation blew through. Everything changed.

Today, a new creative map is taking shape, as the barriers between these businesses fall away, spurred by a swarm of adventurers and explorers… For companies and consumers, actors and artists, marketers and musicians, there is no turning back. On the contrary, this is the wave of tomorrow.

Fast Company, December 2011

I simply wanted to call out Fast Company for being one of the first to acknowledge the highly significant metamorphosis transpiring within the global business landscape: the collision of tech, culture & commerce. I frequently introduce myself as a catalyst for convergence, largely due to my multifaceted professional background. Years in the entertainment, technology and advertising spaces have lead me to one realization: nothing can bolster the three of these disparate industries more than their fusion.

So thank you, Fast Company, for so eloquently echoing my credo.

Foam Core, A Projector & 48 Sleepless Hours

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:38:00 -0500

I’ve developed about half a dozen 3D projection mapping projects, but this one was by far the most demanding.

We were faced with challenges galore: 14 surfaces of assorted shapes and sizes, a 1,500 lumen projector (rather weak), a budget of $0, two people and a 48-hour deadline. Alas, we beat our deadline by two whopping hours, all while running on fumes and black gold.

We transformed a small dark room into a sprawling cityscape. A Coldplay-inspired music bed and a poignant voiceover track helped transport the audience into the story, pixel by pixel, building by building. It was fresh, captivating and emotive. Flat video on screens just doesn’t compare with the potential for immersion offered by a multi-sensory AR installation.

Video soon to come.

PRESSPAUSEPLAY: A Film About Hope, Fear and Digital Culture

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:57:00 -0500

A must-see documentary for all in the professional creative space (and equally as important for those not in the creative space.) Articulate, thought-provoking and inherently controversial.

Download the film for free here.

The creative landscape is changing. Some talk about a revolution. Others talk about a natural evolution. These changes affect everything. From creation to distribution, from artist to consumer.

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.

Eat Your Heart Out, Betty Crocker

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:44:00 -0500

Check out our recently released iPad app, How We Love Food, a digital cookbook developed as a homage to summer afternoons in the kitchen. Why can’t cooking be a communal activity? The app features close to a hundred gourmet recipes and hand-painted illustrations of each dish. All proceeds from the sale of the app go to support Urban Roots, a signature program of the youth empowerment nonprofit, YouthLaunch — that uses sustainable agriculture as a means to transform the lives of young people and increase access to healthy food.

A little peek at the 4-canvas projection-mapping installation we...

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 17:17:00 -0500

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

A little peek at the 4-canvas projection-mapping installation we developed last week… It was the fruit of 3 sleepless nights and a whole lot of energy drink.

Our brief was to take corporate storytelling to the next level. I think we gave PowerPoint a run for its money.

One of my core responsibilities at Tocquigny (and more...

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 13:02:00 -0500

One of my core responsibilities at Tocquigny (and more specifically within Tocquigny Labs) is to immerse myself in emerging technologies, with the key objective of identifying their respective applicabilities within our space. When something is launched, for instance Google+, it is my task to become the resident expert, with the capability of answering a wide gamut of business and technical questions from both internal stakeholders and clients. Like a scientist, I must see beyond the buzz-ridden Mashable articles and “Trending Topics”, and actually submerge myself in the technology. This all leads up to the key function of Labs: adding relevance & context. I get to put on my creative cap and architect innovative applications of the technology specific to our diversified client-base and their short- and long-term needs.

We have a roadmap of technologies in queue, but this week’s was one we had been waiting to test out for quite some time: the Kinect motion-sensing input device (created by Microsoft). Released in conjunction with the XBox 360, it didn’t take long for technologists to see the Kinect’s applicability beyond gaming. The infrared device brings John Underkoffler’s visionary gesture-control interface from Minority Report to life.

This $150 consumer-facing infrared camera has introduced natural user interfaces (through gesture- and voice-control) to the masses. Offered many different names by the tech-crowd (computer vision, NUI, gesture-control, feature-recognition, spatial navigation, et al), the Kinect represents what many feel is the future of physical computing.

This week, we took the Kinect for a lengthy test-drive. Most notably, we used the device to capture full-body movements and converted them into commands that were fed into a piece of music composition software. Illustrated by the above photo, a person can control a digital symphony simply by moving any joint in their body. Sounds like a toy, right? A pretty practical toy… After all, this experiment was the catalyst for dozens of ideas pertinent to our future-facing clientele.

Watch out VCs, Kickstarter is picking up steam. Thanks to the...

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:30:00 -0500

Watch out VCs, Kickstarter is picking up steam.

Thanks to the digital crowd-funding platform, in mere months, an iPhone accessory went from being a garage prototype to spawning $169,200+ of liquid capital and 2,600 pre-orders. The above 3-minute video was all it took to convince thousands to offer up a chunk of their paychecks to an eager entrepreneur. But enough about the power of Kickstarter. You can read articles and articles about the revolutionary platform on TechCrunch.

What I am more excited about is this recently-funded technology project. As the long-tail gets longer, it seems that we’re starting to see a trend in rapid technology consumerization. Hardware and software that was initially developed for the enterprise is now being compacted, manufactured and distributed to the consumer audience. The B2B and B2C markets are converging!

The GoPano Micro is a sub-$100 alternative to a ~$50,000 technology that I’ve been focusing a whole lot of my time on for the past two years — 360° Video Capture. A simple camera adaptor for the iPhone 4 allows anyone to create full-motion interactive panoramic videos. Can you imagine the future of UGC with this technology? Realtors will create virtual video tours; families will re-live vacations like never before; crimes will be increasingly solved by forensic video evidence; filmmakers will release audience-controllable feature films. Hell, I predict that YouTube will support interactive 360° video by 2013.

We’re living in the age of the paradigm shift. Entrepreneurs are in control. Immersive storytelling is no longer an artform. A simple video can spawn thousands of micro-investments.

There’s no better a time to be a part of the action.

Not Another Ad Agency

Sun, 15 May 2011 18:26:00 -0500

“THE TRADITIONAL APPROACHES ARE NOW OBSOLETE. ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARKETING THOUGHTS ARE GONE. ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES AREN’T A NOVELTY. THEY ARE ALL WE’VE GOT LEFT.”

- Seth Godin

I work in advertising. Well, marketing. Scratch that… I work at a company that does a lot of things (including marketing and advertising). Argh. Who likes being confined to a definition? It doesn’t allow for agility. And agility, in my point-of-view, is the key facet driving modern business.

Audience behaviors are changing; technologies are evolving. People make purchasing decisions differently; companies are driven by a new set of needs.

There are a handful of companies that really grasp this paradigm shift. A few notable ones:

Victors and Spoils - The Crowdsourced Agency

From the V&S website:

As the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles, it’s our goal to provide businesses with a better way to solve their marketing, advertising and product-design problems by engaging the world’s most talented creatives.

Why are we doing this? The way we see it, companies need an alternative to both current ad agencies as well as current crowdsourcing platforms. One that offers the strategic direction, engagement and relationship management that agencies deliver today, but one that also delivers the engagement, cultural relevance, results and return on investment that crowdsourcing {if managed and directed well} can deliver.

Anomaly - The Intellectual Property Development Company

A few quotes from the various media outlets:

Anomaly is defiantly not an “Ad agency” the company sets store by developing its own intellectual property which it can licence to clients in return for share in revenues. Their aspiration is to be a product developing IP company, marketing their own portfolio of IP as well as doing that for major brands.
- Creative Review

Since its inception in 2004, the founders and directors have truly shown a different way of doing things, blurring the borders between providing traditional marketing services and working as a business development partner. Eschewing the traditional client/agency relationship, Anomaly works to develop intellectual property for both itself and for its clients…
- Business Week

Google Creative Lab - The In-House Marketing Department

The Lab’s manifesto, care of former Executive Creative Director, Robert Wong:

The long version: “The Google Creative Lab is a small team that strives to rethink marketing across every kind of media, currently existing or not with Google as its sole client. Our mission is to ‘remind the world what it is that they love about Google.’ Our job is to manage and steward the brand, find new ways to communicate the company’s innovations, intentions and ideals, and do work of which we can all be proud. We want people ambitious and crazy enough to think we can actually change the world.”

The short version: “Do epic shit.”

Among their many notable projects: “Google Chrome Speed Tests“, “The Wilderness Downtown“, and “Parisian Love“.

Each company on this short-list is future-proofing themselves by ignoring the ‘industry model’, instead adopting unorthodox approaches built for tomorrow.

Film Studios, Meet Social Media

Thu, 12 May 2011 13:28:00 -0500

Hollywood studios are still scouring around for the perfect digital distribution & monetization model. Silicon Valley (with the help of indie filmmakers) is trying to beat the big boys at their own game.

Case-in-point: FlickLaunch - the first independent film digital distribution platform built entirely on Facebook. It allows filmmakers to stream movies for free to the first 1,000 ‘likers’, thereby leveraging consumer social graphs to drive revenue and buzz.

From today’s Cynopsis Digital:

FlickLaunch provides the tools for filmmakers (who pay a min. $250 fee) to set up “Likeable” fan pages that will stream movies for free for the first 1,000 users who hit the “Like” button. After that, the magic of the social stream will hopefully take over and produce thousands of new viewers willing to pay $1 or $2 (via PayPal for now) for each 7-day rental. Films can viewed on a PC, mobile phone or tablet. The filmmaker keeps 70% and FlickLaunch keeps the now-standard 30% of the proceeds. (A FB credits option rolling out in a couple of weeks will lower the take to 50%.)

I most admire the business model due to the inherent way that it merges content distribution, marketing and monetization. Economies of scale, eh?

Keep an eye on this space.

…a peek at one of this week’s experiments at...

Wed, 11 May 2011 10:28:45 -0500

Multi-Screen Stitching Prototype

Prototype Calibration

…a peek at one of this week’s experiments at Tocquigny Labs (our in-house R&D think-tank).

Inspired by MIT Media Lab’s Junkyard Jumbotron, we decided to create our own asymmetrical synchronized multi-screen virtual display (whew). In under 30 minutes, we calibrated and stitched together two laptops, an iPad, an iPod Touch and an iPhone to form one discrete video display — all controlled by the iPad’s touchscreen.

Quantifiable Proof That 'Multi-Sensory' Drives Engagement

Mon, 02 May 2011 15:17:00 -0500

NPR’s iPhone, iPad, and Android apps have together surpassed five million downloads, an impressive number — but most of their users never stream audio. When they do listen, however, they are far more engaged.

According to NPR’s internal usage data covering January 1 through mid-April, users who request audio — maybe a station stream, a national newscast, or NPR Music content — view twice as many pages as those who only read the apps’ content. On average, audio streamers rack up 4.2 pageviews per visit versus 2.4 for the text-only crowd. (“Pageviews” in this case refers only to news content, not navigation pages.) The ratio holds up for iPad users, too: Listeners view 8.1 pages per visit, versus 3.9 among readers.

- Andrew Phelps, The Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University

Multi-sensory engagement evokes realism. Realism drives the seamless integration of digital in our daily lives.

Read more about NPR’s mobile app analytics findings here.

Grab the NPR app for iOS or Android.

A Tale of Two 360s

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:32:00 -0500

One of my favorite consumer-grade immersion technologies of today is the stitched photo panorama. With higher resolution cameras, gyroscopes and internet connectivity built into a growing number of mobile handsets, I predict a whole lot of movement in this arena.

When I first got my hands on Occipital’s 360 Panorama app for iOS, I knew it was revolutionary (albeit a bit of a toy for the early-adopter set). Last week’s launch of Microsoft’s Photosynth app proved the value the auto-stitching technology could bring to the masses — hinting to me that this space is just about to blow up.

Unfortunately, there are still many issues with both platforms (image fidelity, color correction, brightness/contrast, blurriness), but that’s to be expected with revolutionary technology.

As a test, here are panoramas created with each of the apps (taken with my iPhone 4 at different times), both at Tocquigny’s weekly All-Hands-On-Deck meeting:

Photosynth

360 Panorama

WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:24:46 -0500

WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson

Ratings Revolution: The Future of Television Analytics

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:05:00 -0500

** part of my ongoing blog series on using emerging technologies to transform the entertainment + business landscape **

Each weekday morning, I wake up to a copy of the above Nielsen TV Ratings Report in my email. It’s pretty interesting to see a measure of the overall viewership of primetime network television shows. But that’s about as much utility as I get out of it.

Unfortunately, though, this same ratings data was the justification for $21.7+ billion of ad revenue yielded by the major broadcast networks in 2010. Woah there! It’s no less than asinine that TV networks and advertising/media agencies almost exclusively use Nielsen’s increasingly obsolete Target Rating Points system to attach a value to specific television properties and programming slots.

The company’s proprietary Local People Meter technology and archaic paper diaries simply collect a small aggregated sample of audience TV watching habits and high-level demographic (age/geo) data to determine a program’s rating, and therefore, fiscal value. Does it really make sense to use cumulative viewership (potential reach ÷ estimated reach) as the primary metric to gauge potential marketing effectiveness or a television program’s success?

Granted, Nielsen does release reports on the effectiveness (receptivity, resonance and reaction) of specific ads, and performs brand-recall studies as illustrated in the above widget, but that information typically doesn’t correlate with the valuation of the media buy.

Effectiveness vs. Performance
The objective of an agency or brand’s media buying function is to increase the sales of a product by appealing to a targeted audience with the highest propensity to buy that product. In this case, why aren’t we valuating the primetime lineup based on the amount of peer influence the audience has or the collective sentiment, political affiliation or buying power of viewers? This is the standard practice in digital advertising — why should broadcast be so different? In addition to the above, I have seen one KPI stick out as a true predictor of marketing performance — engagement. The issue: Nielsen has no way of quantifying the amount of, or value of, audience engagement.

The Secret
Of course there is currently no cut-and-dry solution, but companies like Networked Insights, BlueFin Labs and the just released Trendrr.tv are providing practical alternatives to Nielsen. Of those three, Networked Insights seems to be the most substantiated by data. The company’s SocialSenseTV analytics platform has already been used to advise TV executives during the May 2010 broadcast upfronts. Their brilliant report (view the PDF here) illustrated total viewership as not being entirely indicative of an audience’s social influence, passion or engagement. Nielsen’s #10 ranked show at the time, ABC’s LOST, acquired the highest social index ranking on Networked Insight’s report. It’s still not 100% representative of an advertised product’s increased sales numbers, but we’re getting closer and closer.

Side note: the entertainment analytics space seems to be moving pretty quickly. Since I published my blog post on the advent of social television check-in apps in February, a number of TV execs have disclosed to me their plans to use metrics from IntoNow, Miso and Get Glue to identify and engage core influential audiences of certain shows on a microscopic level. TV is getting ever more personal. More on that in a future blog post.

A sneak peek of a video projection mapping project we’re...

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 12:17:47 -0500

A sneak peek of a video projection mapping project we’re developing in the Tocquigny Labs studio. Transforming 2D video into a 3D experience.

For a bit of inspiration, check out this exhaustive repository of projection mapping projects.

Head Tracking for iPad: Glasses-Free 3D Display Thanks to the...

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:05:00 -0500

Head Tracking for iPad: Glasses-Free 3D Display

Thanks to the innovative folks at Engineering Human-Computer Interaction Research Group, it looks like glasses-free 3D is closer to becoming a reality — especially as they built the prototype using the new consumer electronics standard, Apple’s iPad 2. (I’d say that any technology that sells an estimated 2.6 million units in two weeks is, or will soon become, a standard). I’ve been working on a few projects that take advantage of the unique properties of the device’s front- and rear-facing cameras, but this particular hack is a true game-changer.

More information can be found at PC Magazine.

"As strategists, we often find ourselves doing similar things. We observe patterns of behavior,..."

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:39:47 -0500

“As strategists, we often find ourselves doing similar things. We observe patterns of behavior, trends and evolutions in culture, emerging technologies and platforms – and look to find the often-surprising places where they intersect. The combining and recombining of insights helps us continually challenge and validate our ideas.”

- Will Simon, Strategist @ Big Spaceship - April 5, 2011

Read the whole blog post here

Trendrr.tv - Social Television Ratings Index

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:07:08 -0500

Trendrr.tv - Social Television Ratings Index:

Launched yesterday: http://trendrr.tv/ - a TV ratings platform that mines social data to create an index of engagement, sentiment & anticipation.

Social Data: Uncovering the REAL Value of Social Media I thought...

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 18:21:00 -0500

Social Data: Uncovering the REAL Value of Social Media

I thought I’d share a presentation that my team created for a CEO symposium a few months back. The brief: conceive a piece of executive-level content that approaches the topic of social media from a unique and future-facing perspective.

The C-Suite appears to be tired of the prophetic “social media is mandatory” sermons from the sea of self-proclaimed ‘gurus’ and ‘experts’, so I had to dig deep to uncover a viewpoint that’d be both factual and actionable. Enter Social Data. It’s not an analytics tool, nor is it a company. Social Data represents the gold hidden beneath each and every conversation, interaction, relationship and profile on the web. It is richer than rich; perhaps more valuable a resource to companies than a corporate social network presence.

That’s right. The mining and application of social data has resulted in some pretty compelling case studies:

Tweets (and their associated data) have proven to be effective predictors of stock market trends.
The future of TV ratings and the valuation of modern broadcast advertising could be forever altered due to the usage of social engagement data by companies like Networked Insights. This past May, the company released its report, “SocialSenseTV: Network Ratings Report, May 2010”, which drew on 1.5 billion online interactions from 300 million people to measure the relative engagement of segmented TV audiences. Nielsen: watch your back!
Even metadata associated with a person’s LinkedIn profile can be used as a risk-assessment calculator for banks, credit card companies and lenders. Here’s how:

Social graphs allow credit issuers to know if you’re connected to a community of great credit customers. Creditors can see if people in your network have accounts with them, and are free to look at how they are handling those accounts.

The presumption is that if those in your network are responsible cardholders, there is a better chance you will be, too. So, if a bank is on the fence about whether to extend you credit, you may become eligible if those in your network are good credit customers.

- Joel Jewitt, Director of Business Development, Rapleaf (article)

These brilliant applications of social data simply set a foundation for what is possible. I predict that there will soon be an extensive BI ecosystem fueled entirely by social data. Why? Because it can provide value to practically any company, helping to drive efficiency, competitiveness and revenue.

Keep your eyes peeled.

2011 SXSW Music Fest - Top 5 Breakout Acts

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:06:00 -0500

Exhausted. 10 days at the SXSW Music & Media Conference can do that to ya. Being in the interesting fusion of industries that I’m in, all three festivals (Interactive, Film & Music) were equally as significant for me. [Funny enough: this convergence was a pretty prevalent theme at the conference this year]. Equal amounts of business and pleasure were had – as is illustrated by the following personal metrics:

107 waking hours spent at SXSW
23 sessions (panels, keynotes, Q&As) attended
31 parties attended
76 musical artists seen
3 films watched
4 press interviews given
62 Gowalla checkins
6 miles walked

A visualization of my Gowalla checkins throughout SXSW 2011

While I could write dozens of blog posts about the Interactive and Film fests (I’ll spare ya), a little music commentary seems obligatory. Companies in the Northern US have snow days; banks have Federal holidays; my company has SXSW music days. Once a year, 2,000+ musical artists arrive in our neighborhood for the famed festival, momentarily rubbing shoulders with the Silicon Valley & Madison Avenue elite evacuating the town following the close of SXSW Interactive. Every bar, restaurant, theater, yard, street, bowling alley and power plant in Downtown Austin is taken over by the world’s most prominent musicians playing alongside the crème de la crème of under-the-radar acts. The latter is what the conference is really about — discovering what’s next.

So without further ado, my personal Top 5 Breakout Musical Artists of SXSW 2011:

1. Givers

I’ve never seen an act as platonically unified as this five-some on stage at The Windish Agency’s Saturday afternoon showcase. Their Dirty Projectors-inspired pop music is sonically complex, yet perfectly constructed for an afternoon of dancing in the sun.

2. Foster the People

Also a part of the Windish day-party, I was tipped off by Thrillist, FILTER, MTV and a handful of other sources about this LA indie rock trio. Spinner referred to them as “the next MGMT”, but I left their show digging them infinitely more than the 2008 breakout artist.

3. Cults

I don’t know what it is about these folks. Recently signed to Columbia Records, I attached to them immediately after they plucked the first notes of “Go Outside” at the [hot, hot, hot] Columbia showcase. Four guys and a gal, Cults not only played an authentic energy-infused show, but were even more fun to hang out with after. Surf-rock? Twee-pop? I’m not sure how to describe them, but count me as a new fan.

4. Oh Land

Beautiful and talented, Oh Land is the electro-pop music project of young Danish (by way of NYC) songstress, Nanna Øland Fabricus. I kicked off my SXSW marathon week with her performance at our client’s FADER Fort by FIAT side-festival — just days after watching her American TV debut on Late Show with David Letterman. Oh Land is about to blow up.

5. Skrillex

I’ve never really gone out of my way to listen to house/electronic music — that is, until October 2010 when I caught Deadmau5’s inspiring sunset performance at Austin City Limits Music Festival. Weeks later, Deadmau5 tweeted about Sonny Moore and his music project, Skrillex. All it took was one tweet to suck me into the dubstep craze. While I saw Skrillex live a month ago, SXSW 2011 seemed to be Sonny’s ‘coming-out’ party. As he opened for Duran Duran at C3 Presents’ famed Late Night Party, the crowd of music industry influencers and celebs (including Kevin Costner & Mischa Barton) caught on. As dubstep slithers its way into pop music vernacular, Skrillex will be the genre’s leader.

Bonus: DeYarmond Edison

Okay, so not a “breakout artist”, per se, but a breakout show. Rumored for over a week, and finally confirmed on the FADER Magazine website on Friday, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon reunited with his college buddies for a once-in-a-lifetime 3-song performance at the FADER Fort by FIAT. (If you don’t know Bon Iver, stop what you’re doing right now and grab a copy of the 2007 masterpiece, For Emma, Forever Ago.) Tucked in between a set by South African hip hop artist Spoek Mathambo and super secret surprise guest, Diddy, Vernon & team silenced the audience with their powerful indie folk ballads. Wow. This half hour defined SXSW 2011 for me.

Hard choices. Thoughts?