In a previous post, I wrote about the nightmarish future envisioned by Corning where every surface is made of glass and is capable of assaulting you with social media and advertising while also acting as a video monitor and camera. While this may make me sound like a Luddite, I’m happy to report that I have recently become aware of a product that looks to make life better rather than more scattered: the Nest thermostat.

Created by former members of Apple’s iPod team, the Nest is a learning thermostat. It pays attention to how and when you adjust the thermostat, programs itself based on your input, and starts to make those changes for you. Through a collection of sensors, it can tell when you’re home, or asleep, and can make adjustments to the temperature that you would, if you were there. This makes the Nest a potentially money and power saving device and could revolutionize the thermostat industry, which in my opinion is long overdue for a revolution.

The Nest has a click wheel, much like the original iPod, and though borrows some functional design from the classic Honeywell thermostat design, it makes use of a round LCD screen to display submenus and usage charts on the thermostat itself. It’s also wifi enabled, so it can be accessed remotely. And there is an app for it as well. I’m not sure if they have some way to connect it to Facebook, but I wouldn’t bet against it. They also have the standard introductory video with the requisite hipster indie music:

It’s a little spendy for a thermostat, but it seems as if you’d be able to recoup that expense in energy savings. Standard post-social media marketing aside, I think it is safe to call this the most exciting thermostat to hit the market in decades. Really.

The JWT annual “things to watch” list includes many categories and topics like; Cloud Security, the much gossiped about “iTV”,  travel trends, “de-tech-ing” trends,  objectifying objects and food as the new Eco-issue.  I am so excited by several of the things listed and want to touch on a few.

Anywhere, any-way shopping – This category speaks to the integration of e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailing.  QR codes could play a big part in this trend by allowing consumers to scan the code of the items they want and have the items collected and ready for pick up in-store.

Gen Z – Generation Z are kids born after 2000 who have grown up on smartphones. Many families look to this group for information on gadgets and all things new on the web.  Gen Z is said to have major influence over household purchasing decisions when it comes to tech gadgets.  This generation is also more brand aware than any before it with most children able to recognize nearly 100 brands by age 3!

Baby Boomer trends – Senior Cohousing and Apps for the older demographic are areas to watch this coming year.  Boomers are getting older but they tend to stay up with the latest in the digital world.  There will be more and more apps geared specifically to this aging generation, including the glasses off iphone app, which claims to improve vision by training readers’ eyes to adapt to certain patterns.

Both of these last two provide many opportunities for marketers to think about promoting brands in new and innovative ways to audiences hungry for it.  To read the JWT list of “things to watch” check it out here.

The next day my favorite appliance repairman (the Appliance Man, I swear by him)  informed me that it was the motor. That meant a hefty repair bill.

My dryer was a mere 462 days old, (or 92 past its one year warranty). Now I’m no industrial engineer, but I would think the motor would be a pretty major component of a dryer. Dryers aren’t supposed to be a disposable product, like lightbulbs. The shelf life of a motor should be a bit longer than 462 days. Certainly the warranty should exceed that?!?!

So, I contacted the 1-800-customer support line hoping they could help. After running the gauntlet of button mashing and on hold muzak, I finally spoke to a real person who told me, 12 months was 12 months. Basically I was SOL.

I was mad. I took my frustration out on the twitterverse to voice my anger.

Then, 4 minutes later, my phone buzzed. I received a direct tweet from @Ge_appliances:

I was shocked. I fully expected my tweet to linger in cyberspace until it was completely forgotten.

Megan and her team moved at warp speed . She directed me to their E-Response team, who by 8:30 that evening, agreed to not only cover the service call but replace the motor at no cost.

It was refreshing to not only have a right wronged but too see that someone in the corporate world was listening.

We push to the value and importance of social media on a daily basis to our clients. It’s something we believe in. To see it in action from the other side of the fence and knowing how it made me feel as a consumer, just reinforced those beliefs.

It’s good to be heard. Chalk one up for the little guy.

T-Mobile created a demonstration in Barcelona, Spain. At first it appeared that you simply played the Angry Birds game on the smartphone. No big deal right?  However, as soon as you played the game on the smartphone, real Angry Birds would shoot out of this box towards the larger than life structure. This real life version of the game, complete with exploding birds and pigs, began to catch pedestrians attention throughout the day. Soon, swarms of people were stopping by to check it out and of course record it on their smartphones.

The end of video pans the crowd and this message appears, “With our biggest range of smartphones, you can join in the fun wherever you are.” I think that this is a great brand awareness tool. T-Mobile was getting tons of people to actively engage with their product.

I can’t say that this would get me to change carriers, but I know I’d definitely want to join the fun! Too bad we didn’t have a setup like this at our annual Halloween party. It would’ve been a great party starter!

We all know it, some fear it….the moment when you find out who you will be sitting arm to arm with on a plane. Most times I dont seem to think to much about this, but usually one bad trip will make wish there was an alternative. Recently on a trip to California, I was seated next to young boy that enjoyed tapping me on the leg while sleeping! Multiple times he wanted to show me the view, but there was also the R2D2 toy he pointed out from the Sky Mall magazine. The trip back to KY wasn’t much better. This time I was next to a man that ordered about 6 beers, which meant I got up about 6 times for his restroom breaks! Now we may have more control of our destinies! What if you could choose your seat-mate based on Facebook profiles? One airline, KLM Dutch Airlines might be making this possible in 2012.

While booking your flight, you could have the option to see the Facebook profiles of other passengers (that have opted in the program!). See someone you might like to spend a few hours next to? Book next to them! Or see someone you want to stay far, far away from, this program could help there too! Some say this could be a version of online dating, miles in the sky. You could also see if any friends or family members are on your flight!? Either way, social media stays one step ahead, even in the air!

comScore recently released a whitepaper entitled “It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed.”

The number eight “need-to-know” is that social networking leads in online display advertising in the US, but lags in share of dollars.  In fact, social networking sites account for 27.7% of US online impressions and 20.7% of page views, but only accounts for 14.8% of estimated display ad spending.  Why is this?

There are a few reasons, I believe.  First, let’s consider how consider how display and social impressions are sold.  Most display impressions are purchased from a publisher site or through a network and the buyer works with a sales person.  There are salaries and other administrative costs to account for, therefore those costs are built into the cost paid for each impression.  Most social impressions, however, are purchase through a self-administered online marketplace that does not have as many overhead expenses.  It’s my opinion that the lower administrative costs are passed along to the advertiser, which results in a lower CPM and lower spending.

We should also consider that the social marketplace is still not as mature as the publisher marketplace.  If we think back to the mid-2000s, there was not much demand for impressions and almost every site gave impressions away as added value.  Once the sites did require payment, it was usually a low CPM, until demand drove the costs to the current levels.  I believe that social impressions are going through the same life cycle now.  For buyers, if you examine your campaign CPMs or CPCs for the same campaign from one year to the next, or even one flight to the next, you’ll likely find that the costs have increased by 20%-50% over a short period of time.

Lastly, certain publisher sites, specifically sites that have companion print products, are likely charging more to make up the ground they are losing from declining revenues on the print side.  Print revenue and circulation has been in deep decline since 2008.  Many publishers have made significant adjustments, in terms of paper size, frequency of publishing and staff reductions to stay afloat over the past several years.  The demand for the same digital products have grown, therefore this revenue channel has had to support more than it has had to in the past.

Over the next three to five years, I expect the gap between social display ad spending and the social display ad impressions to narrow.  I don’t expect, however, that the social display ad spending will ever equal the number of display ad impressions because I think the costs will always be more competitive than other display advertising options.

I learned about a gadget recently that seems to make point-of-sale transactions easier than ever.  It’s called Square, a credit card reader for iPhone, iPad and Android.  I discovered it, of all places, at a craft bazaar.

Every year I join my Grandmother at a local show as she sells her sewing crafts.  This year we couldn’t believe the number of people who asked if we accepted credit cards.  Although my 80 year old Grandmother does have a Facebook and Twitter account, why would she have an account and machinery for processing credit cards?  Well, it was a fellow vendor who had this neat toy.

You can find them at stores like Best Buy, Radio Shack and even Apple, for a more than reasonable price.  After downloading the app and creating an account, you plug in the reader to swipe cards on-the-spot.  Customers use their fingertip to sign, then a receipt can be emailed or received via text.  For a small fee per transaction, the purchase is deposited into the seller’s bank account the next day.  All without the hassle of opening a merchant account and buying equipment the old fashioned (and costly) way.

Not only am I excited to have found a gift idea for my Grandmother, but I am pleased to have found a user friendly and inexpensive way to build sales.  I hate to think of the sales we’ve lost because we did not have this technology.

Twitter unveiled some major updates to the Interface in December. One interesting tidbit for developers is the new Tweet embed feature. Now embedding a tweet will be as simple as embedding a YouTube video…well sort of. It’s not quite as seamless as YouTube. The one problem I find with this feature right out of the gate is that the embed link is hidden three clicks in from the actual tweet.

So here’s how to embed a tweet using the new feature: Once on twitter.com, hover over the tweet and click “Open” (in the righthand corner). Next, click on the “Details” link, which then takes you to a single post of that tweet. Click on “Embed this Tweet.” From there you get a lightbox with options for html, shortcode (for wordpress), and just the link. It also has choices for built in styles for alignment. Copy the code you want and you’re ready to embed the tweet!

So, what are the practical uses of embedding a tweet? Realistically, I think the only people who this feature is going to be of interest to are bloggers and social media people. It’s just another way of connecting social media accounts and generating a buzz by sharing the tweet on other platforms that may gain twitter followers.

From a development standpoint it’s a nice tool and works seamlessly, I just don’t care for the fact that it takes three clicks to get to the embed code. Otherwise, I think Twitter has done a nice job with this new feature.

Mornings can be rough. How many times do you hit the snooze button before finally rolling out of bed? I’m sure some of you may feel bad for hitting the snooze button when you’re later rushing to get to work on time. However, a new iOS app called Snooze can change all that.

Every time you hit the snooze on your alarm, $0.25 is donated to a charity that is partnered with LetGive, a company that combines charitable giving and technology. The app was released in September and can be downloaded on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad for free. Twice a month users are offered the chance to donate the money they’ve acquired for hitting their snooze button.

The app can work one of two ways for the user. It can either give you an excellent reason for being late to work in the mornings- What boss can beret you for catching a few extra Zzzz’s in the name of charity? Or it can motivate you to get to work on time because you don’t want to give all your money away because you were too lazy to get out of bed.

Is this something you would use? Is this a brilliant idea or a flop? Let us know your thoughts!

[Editor's Note: Pat actually wrote this blog in early January and I inadvertently misplaced it in my email folder system. Apologies to Pat. It's really good, so I wanted to post it anyway! Editor's Note Fin.]

As 2011 drew to a close, I took pause and looked back over a year’s worth of advertising.  Luckily, AD Week did that “looking back” for us and put forward the 10 best spots of the year: from the inexplicable “Cats With Thumbs” to the trailer for Dead Island (which I’ve written about previously) to the ultimate winner, Volkswagen.

What is clear is that good advertising piques interest, great advertising spreads like wildfire.  The Volkswagen spot has more than 50 million views on YouTube.  Sure, a lot of those people probably went to see the original commercial play out with music and characters from Star Wars, but what they left with was the fact that the 2012 Passat has a remote start feature.  In fact, the 2012 Passat outsold the 2010 Passat (the last year the Passat was available in the U.S.) in just two months.

Similarly, Deep Silver’s ad for Dead Island so thoroughly drove pre-sales that it helped it achieve great success despite being, in my opinion, an unpolished game. Dead Island was on my doorstep on release date. I could have waited, read the player reviews on IGN like a good gaming nerd, but their advertising grabbed me and demanded my attention.  I was more excited and subsequently more let down by this game than I think I’ve been in the past.

The theme of this brief blog is simple: Agencies that truly believe in their client and share their client’s vision produce the best work.

What will the ad landscape look like for the balance of 2012?  Better yet, who is producing your brand’s ads?