FRIDAYS AT FOUR Volume Ten Issue Four

FRIDAYS AT FOUR
News and Trends from GF Strategies
Volume Ten Issue Four
March 2014

Here are some quick notes from articles, a trip to South by Southwest and trends that have come our way the past month:

• Tweets about music will get their own Billboard chart. Bob Mocsudlowsky, Twitters head of music called the Billboard partnership “part of an ongoing effort to make Twitter the universal signal of real-time music measurement—NY Times
• Facebook plans to deliver internet access via drone. The company bought Ascenta, a British firm that created early versions of unmanned solar powered drones which stayed aloft for two weeks. Facebook has set up a new group called the Facebook  Connectivity Lab to look at whether access can be delivered more cheaply through new types of satellites and unmanned aircraft. –NY Times
• Experiential marketing firms continue to land new clients, including Dockers. MKG working with Dockers to create a Wear the Pants tour. The stream let followers know where the airstream trailer would stop next. The result, 11,000 new Facebook fans, 52% more Instagram followers, and 3 million tweets mentioning @Dockers- Fortune magazine
• “Its boom time for data and marketing”  So says Brandwatch CMO Will McIness. Firms like Gnip, which indexes all of Twitter, and Brandwwatch analyze this information. Percolate another content creation firm puts it this way –“marketers used to create five messages a year, now they create five a minute”—Ad Week
• At the upcoming NAMA OneShow in Chicago the talk of the show will be cashless.  Coming soon will be a new EMV standard, coming soon that will be required in all ATM machines or any location that takes cards via a machine, kiosk or other automated machines.
• My Magic+ has been unveiled at Disney parks via a band that is loaded with cash when you purchase your daily admissions. The system is for reservations and ride planning and allows bookings month in advance on a website or smartphone app. The bands have RFID chips, which some critics have called spychips. We want to give our customers a “more immersive,more seamless and more personal experience “ says Tom Staggs. –Business Week
• Heat maps are being used by a new firm Prism Skylabs to track movements in real time as they make their way around the shopping mall. And these heat maps can also show which products get picked up more often than others. –Wall Street Journal
• Intellitix is back at Coachella this year. Fans can use their wristband through Live Click, fans can check in with the wristbands  using various touchpoints to check in with their friends. The RFID technology has been been used at festivals in the UK for many years and are now emerging in a big way in the United States. —ProQuest
• A new development in large markets is the emergence of Food halls. These are new food halls taking over underpermorming food courts in malls or other locations and creating these  food halls that cater to the emerging culinary sophisticates. One firm operates 16 of these food halls in the Chicago area—AP
• Google reports that is now earning monies from its artists page Antenna. “Free is where you start and then you branch out to charge for added information. Google says they have now divided their model into three groups—fans looking for free tunes, fans willing to pay a small amount to rent or stream music  and superfans who will pay almost any price for a momento from their favorite act. And they have learned that it is easier to funnel fans from a genre specific music site than a general music site—WallStreet Journal
• Two weeks removed from South by Southwest and so many panels to cover and try and attend ranging from “Who curates all this content?” to “Wearables’ to what can the Grateful Dead teach EDM Music?”.  A few of the highlights from the “Convergence Day” where the interactive sessions merge with the music panels included panels with topics like “Letting Your Fandoms Build

Your Kingdoms”, “Internet Radio is on Top Again. Why?” .Bad Ass Concert Marketing: Pack the F——Room”, “HipHop: From Mixtapes to the Cloud”, “Night of the Living Dead: The Grateful Dead and EDM”,”The Death of Podcasting Has Been Exaggerated”,”Indie Food is the New Indie Rock”.

From  GF Strategies President Greg Flakus

www.gfstrategies.com

Contact us at greg@gfstragies.com

360-573-7027