In our Smartshot webinar on Radical Demography, we told you about four dramatic demographic shifts that need to be in marketers’ peripheral vision, including “DINK” (dual income, no kids) households and multigenerational households. Well, guess what? In Nielsen’s new Pop-Facts® Demographics report, they describe these shifts as an integral part of their five demographic key trends for the next century. And, they’ve got the numbers to prove it. (Contact us if you’d like a copy of the deck.)

Then again, that shouldn’t be new news to our frequent readers. What is new is that marketers are paying attention, particularly to the rise of multigenerational households.  A recent article from Ad Age shares a number of examples, including:

• Nintendo marketing their Wii gaming systems to appeal simultaneously to kids, adults, and grandparents, including games like Brain Age and Wii bowling
• Toys ‘R’ Us has offered targeted coupons to grandparents, since grandparents “buy one in four toys, four of every 10 children’s books, and one of every five video games.”
• Ameriprise Financial advisers have been trained to address the specific needs of adults who are now tasked with caregiving for their parents
• Even TV shows like “Modern Family” and “Parenthood” are starting to portray multigenerational households as the norm. And those shows are likely to have more multigenerational households watching them, providing advertisers with the opportunity to target this demographic more effectively.

Oh, by the way, don’t think our other two trends from Radical Demography (single person households and female-headed households) were left behind. In fact, they recently came together when single women lauded Lowe’s for positively portraying single women in their 30s in their TV spots. See, demography can be radical.

Speaking of radical, don’t forget to vote for Upshot’s proposed panel for SXSW 2011. Voting ends this Friday. You’ll need to create an account to vote, but we promise that it takes less than a minute. We appreciate any help we can get!

In previous posts (here and here, particularly), we’ve talked about the potential future of print and what that future means for advertisers. However, most of this was based on speculation: here’s how things might work, how photos could look, how ads should interact.

In the meantime, Viv Magazine just went ahead and did it.

Above, you can see how the feature story from their March/April issue plays out, and below, you can get behind the scenes on how the issue was created. (And if you’d like to see the animated cover, head this way.) If this isn’t an immersive sensory experience, I don’t know what is. In the latter video, the narrator points out that this is not motion for motion’ sake; rather, it’s used to enhance the story the same way static photos currently complement print articles. Oh, you mean it’s not a gimmick? Excellent!

And, he’s right. The video above does a great job of setting a mood and tone for the article, and does so without distracting the reader from the content.  (By the way, does this help the doubters recognize the potential of the iPad?) Marketers who are interested in getting in on the act will have to take the same approach. The tendency to create irresistibly “shiny” ads in this medium will be great, but overloading these issues with distracting graphics and sound will end up exhausting readers rather than engaging them. And that would be a shame, considering the enormous potential these devices will provide. Let’s hope that when marketers get involved here, they’re thinking smarter rather than bigger.

What the Web Will Be Like with Facebook’s “Like”

If you’d prefer a text-only version, keep reading below. And if you like the post, be sure to “Like” it!

WHAT THE WEB WILL BE LIKE WITH FACEBOOK’S “LIKE”

You’re going to like it.

A whole lot of people spent last week freaking out about Facebook’s new “instant personalization” features. Most of these freakouts came from users panicking about the privacy implications of Facebook sharing their (public) information with third party sites. A smaller percentage of these freakouts came from analysts realizing that as soon as users understand the benefits of instant personalization, we’re all about to start using the internet in a completely novel way.

Marketers, start listening to this second group, because Facebook is on the verge of something big. Let’s look a little deeper, shall we?

By now, most of us are familiar with the concept of “liking” (formerly “fanning”) something on Facebook. You can “like” public figures like Louis CK or hobbies such as bowling. You can “like” brands like Corona or marketing powerhouses like Upshot. And you can “like” important causes like saving the environment or completely banal things such as not being on fire (quite a bold statement!). When you choose to “like” any of these things, you also notify your Facebook network, so “liking” Nickelback will broadcast your (inexplicably awful) taste to your peers (and probably explain why they’ve stopped talking to you).

But, there’s more to that news stream than just the things you’ve “liked” within Facebook. With the arrival of Facebook Connect (which we covered in a prior Potty Posting), other sites can broadcast your tastes back to Facebook, so your peers can learn that you gave Paris Hilton’s The Hottie and the Nottie a 10/10 on Netflix. (Have I introduced you to the aforementioned Nickelback guy? You two would really hit it off.)

These features have enabled Facebook to become the king of social media (with 400 million members, and growing), but most of this information heads in one direction. Users declare that they “like” something, and it ends up in their news stream on Facebook.com, along with photos, and videos, Farmville triumphs, and… you get the idea. It gets lost in the clutter, rather than forming a piece of a larger profile about our tastes and preferences.

But what if things were different? What if that one-way exchange turned into a loop? What if “liking” The Hopleaf meant that when I visit Yelp, the site would prioritize a recommendation for another craft brew mecca like The Map Room? What if “liking” both of those bars meant that when I visit a travel website, I would be directed to a page that tells me the best bars for craft beer across the United States? And, if I “liked” those bars… well, hopefully Facebook would steer me to a health spa, since I’d be in need of some serious detoxification by then.

But setting aside my personal problems, don’t you think that this scenario would be a better internet experience for everyone?

It would. And that’s what “instant personalization” is all about: personalizing sites around the web according to your interests and the recommendations of your Facebook network. That little “like” button is the key. The like button can now be added to any page on the web, allowing Facebook to harness what you “like” on any site (for example, you can now “like” any of the articles on theawesomeblog.net). Then, Facebook shares this data with trusted partners to personalize your experience on their sites. For instance, the streaming music site Pandora can now analyze all the bands you’ve “liked” in order to create a playlist customized to your tastes. Pandora, in turn, can share this information with concert listing sites like SonicLiving and let you know if any bands you “like” are coming to town. In other words, all the websites you are visiting have become instantly personalized.

For marketers, this is big news. Our customers want personalized, customized, relevant interactions with our brands, which have been relatively tough to deliver. But, our consumers are about to start telling us a lot about their interests, and we will have the opportunity to deliver targeted, valuable messaging in an absolutely unprecedented manner. For our clients, the future could look something like these (purely speculative) examples:

• If someone generally “likes” online recipes that are healthy and can be prepared in under 30 minutes, Kraft can prioritize these recipes when this person visits kraftrecipes.com or uses the iFood Assistant.
• If a business traveler “likes” college sports stories, Gogo Inflight Internet can deliver messaging on their portal page that reminds this person to keep up on his or her favorite teams while in the air.
• If a Disney Vacation Club member “likes” the outdoors, DVC can emphasize their resorts that feature more natural surroundings.

We could continue with similar hypotheticals for each of our brands, but so could you. And that’s the point. If there was one overarching takeaway from this year’s SXSW Interactive conference, it was the willingness for these tech companies to let marketers get under their hoods. The Facebooks of the world are creating technology solutions without really knowing which problems they can solve, while we have expert insights into our consumers’ needs and wants. Someone turn on the Barry White, ‘cause this is a marketing marriage that needs to be consummated! We’ve seen it happening with Foursquare, we’ve heard Twitter calling for it, and now, Facebook will be on the prowl for partners who can imagine the potential of “the social graph.” It’s not about determining which service is “the hot one” and jumping on the bandwagon; it’s figuring out which service has the data that can be harnessed for deep, meaningful customer interactions. We “like” what we’re seeing.

the hotspot for haute thought is the pot at upshot

Generally speaking, these announcements supported a point we made during our coverage of SXSW Interactive; services like Twitter want marketers to come up with innovative ways to apply their “firehose” of data. This was implicit in founder Evan Williams’ presentation, when he noted that Twitter represents different things to different people, and that finding new applications is the key to introducing new users to the site. Twitter can already be used for keeping up with friends, or tracking breaking news, or getting the scoop on deals and discounts, or being the first to know about new products, or… well, there are probably a number of other uses we haven’t quite uncovered yet. According to Williams, this is the challenge to developers (and by extension, to brands who work with them): create experiences that make Twitter relevant to new consumer groups. Twitter’s success is largely a product of the applications that outside developers have brought to the service, solving problems for users that the “official” Twitter team hadn’t even considered. And who is most qualified to identify problems that consumers want to have solved? Uh, we are. That’s why we have a planning department! It’s up to us to identify issues that a service like Twitter can address; believe me, they’ll be more than happy to figure out the “how.”

Of course, that’s the big picture. In the short run, there are simpler opportunities for marketers. When brands tweet information out to their followers, this information tends to “fall off the screen” fairly quickly, as it gets pushed off by more recent tweets. While this is an obvious problem for marketers, it’s also shortchanging the user. If I am following brand X, I obviously want to know about the information they’re sharing, and having it pushed off the screen is preventing me from accessing relevant information. Enter, promoted tweets. Brands can now pay to promote their tweets and keep them on-screen, so users will continue to see the tweets even as newer information comes up. (Brands can only promote their own tweets; they can’t pay for their competitors’ tweets or other people’s tweets about the brand).

While this system slightly resembles Google’s AdWords, the important distinction with promoted tweets is that these are not ads in the strict sense. The content is still a tweet. Let’s take the hypothetical example from Evan Williams’ presentation. Let’s say the iPad comes out and there are a number of tweets about people having problems charging the battery. If you’re a company that sells a product that addresses this problem, your tweets will be very relevant to users searching for this information. Of course, your tweets will also be lost in a deluge of unrelated tweets about the iPad, since it’s all anyone can talk about at the moment. A promoted tweet will help ensure that your message doesn’t fall off the screen, and provide more relevant data for consumers. And, considering that their are 600 MILLION searches run on Twitter every day, delivering more relevant answers will be extremely important in the coming months. So, everybody wins! (For more information on how promoted tweets work, how they’re paid, and more, check out TechCrunch’s coverage here.)

For brands, this brings up some important points to consider when coming up with a Twitter strategy. For now, the key to promoted tweets is timeliness. Are there days when your brand’s message is more resonant? (Think about how many brands used Tax Day to get a message out.) Are there times during the day when your message especially connects with consumers? If so, it’s worth chatting with us and seeing whether Promoted Tweets are the right solution for that problem.

But, timeliness isn’t the only factor that makes tweets relevant. Highlighting popular tweets (i.e. updates that are frequently retweeted) is the quick fix for now, since these tweets are obviously deemed important by the Twitter community. But, as Twitter continues to aggregate location data, this info will certainly become a big piece of the relevance equation. Since Twitter’s core user accesses the site through a mobile platform, most of those searches are probably seeking some kind of locally relevant information. Someone who’s looking for “best pizza” in New York wants something different than someone in Chicago. But, on a more granular level, it’s important to know if someone who tweeted “This is the best pizza!” was at Giordanos or Lou Malnatis when they said it. It’s this kind of place data that Twitter is currently curating, matching latitudinal/longitudinal data to real places like restaurants, bars, venues, parks, and more. When you consider the aforementioned Promoted Tweets, you can start to see where Twitter’s heading: paying for a promoted tweet at a specific time, for a specific place, will really deliver relevant content to users. Do stay tuned, won’t you?

Finally, let’s round things out with a few stats that will help you get a grasp of the size of the Twitter ecosystem. It’s healthy, to say the least.

* Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users.

* Twitter gets 300,000 new users a day.

* Twitter receives 180 Million Unique visitors a month.

* 75% of the service’s traffic comes from outside of Twitter.com

* There are 600 million search queries a day within the Twitter universe

• Part 1: Setting the Mobile Stage. We talked about how the rise of the mobile web and apps are changing the physical way we interact with our phones. Can we still even call it a phone when it’s rarely at our ear?
• Part 2: Touching Me, Touching You. Interactive, tactile experiences are enhancing in-store marketing in incredible ways. But, the next developments will likely be touch-less.
• Part 3: Not Location, but Local. Mobile apps are proving useful for consumers who continue to seek out information on local items (especially food).
• Part 4: Playing around at SXSW. We look at effective gaming strategies for incentivizing employees, rewarding responsible consumer behavior, and driving collaboration.
• Part 5: How App-Makers Feel About “After the App.” We considered what works for smartphone apps, and when they don’t work, whether the mobile web is the place to be.
• Part 6: The Location Wars. The “winner” of the location wars won’t be Gowalla or foursquare; it’ll be the brand that understands how to use location-based social networking to create compelling, social activities for consumers.
• Part 7: Welcome to the Year of Location. Location officially matters. This will be the year that location teaches us about our consumers’ behavior, redefines how our customers shop, and enables us to provide more engaging marketing at the local level.
• Part 8: The Online Video that Just Won’t Go Away. Online video continues to be an extremely engaging medium. We dive into the secrets behind Funny or Die’s classic content, and how services like Ustream are bringing live videos into the equation.
• Part 9: This Year’s Twitter. While many attendees were on the lookout for SXSW’s “next Twitter,” it turns out the big breakthroughs were coming from some familiar places: Twitter and Facebook.
• Part 10: Tying up the Loose Ends. We send you off with some updates on QR Codes and Creative Competitions.

If you still didn’t get your fill of SXSWi, not to worry. We’ll be putting together a live presentation of the conference’s most applicable insights, which will debut at Upshot over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, feel free to contact us for deeper dives into any of the above topics.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled awesomeness on The Awesome Blog.

According to Jason Finkelstein at Wavemarket, 55% of all text messages are some variation of the question, “Where are you?” That means that in 2009 there were at least 650 BILLION text messages asking for location information, without even counting what was happening on apps, maps, and the mobile web.

If you’re still wondering whether location “matters” in the mobile environment, I think you’ve got your answer.

So, let’s just call it already: 2010 will be the year of location. That’s right. We just went there.

Let’s be clear, though: this isn’t just about foursquare vs. Gowalla. Location will become a ubiquitous feature of all online (and much offline) media in the very near future; even the heads of today’s leading location-based services are keenly aware that they don’t have a monopoly on location. In fact, the founder of SimpleGeo argues that we should start building web experiences with the assumption that we have location data for every user.

Great! So what does that mean for your brand? It means everything you do will be tied to a place. It means that consumers will want your brand to connect differently with them depending on where they are right at that moment. It means you’ll need to figure out how to best apply the increasingly specific data your consumers are providing about their lives.

The takeaway: location what will enable mobile marketing to become more targeted, more relevant, and more engaging for consumers than perhaps any medium that’s come before. As mobile marketing continues to grow, location will provide context for how consumers interact with goods, services, their hometowns, and their peers.

Now, we just have to figure out what to do with all this location data.

For starters, we can map it. SimpleGeo’s Vicarious.ly was one of many services mapping check-ins during SXSWi, so even non-attendees could see which places were filled to the brim with dorks like us. They’ve just released the video above, which shows how these check-ins unfolded throughout the course of the conference. At a very basic level, brands can learn a lot about the attendees of this conference just by watching how these patterns shift over time. Granted, most of us don’t care too much about where SXSWers are partying, but we do care about where consumers are shopping. That’s why the creators of the ShopSavvy app are now selling “UPC/GPS intent pairs,” which is a horribly clunky way of saying that they’ll provide data about where consumers were when they scanned your item and tried to find a better price. Ahhh, now you’re seeing the point, aren’t you? Map that out and tell us that’s not some actionable data!

Brands can also start comparing data across various locations. We’ll skip over the details for now (but you can read more here), but we can see how this could be applied using Starbucks’ Barista badge from the last post. While we weren’t too keen on the badge itself, we did think that the brand is smart for saying they would use the check-in data to improve targeting and help them understand their consumers’ behavior (i.e. who goes to which Starbucks when). If the Barista badge is just the carrot they’re dangling to get that info, then we’ll concede that it’s a clever way of gathering consumer data.

But, we can also turn these maps around and use them to show consumers the information that they need to know. Throughout the various SXSW conferences, Pepsi’s Zeitgeist compiled live data from foursquare, Flickr, Twitter, and more to show a real-time stream of what was happening around town. A huge spike in information for a particular location could mean that Quentin Tarantino had shown up somewhere, or one of the panels was filling up fast, or one of the parties was especially worth attending (or, if you’re crowd-phobic, avoiding). Organizing the whereabouts of these masses of people brought the conference to life, showing the ebbs and flows of how attendees were congregating. Consider the possibilities for all kinds of events; for example, at this summer’s Pitchfork or Lollapalooza festivals, attendees can see which of the bands playing head-to-head are drawing bigger crowds, and choose their shows accordingly. Furthermore, folks who aren’t attending the shows can see this data online, and draw their own conclusions about whether Lady Gaga or Soundgarden is the bigger ticket.

Moreover, we can do a better job of giving consumers what they’re asking for when they’re engaged in mobile search. Google knows this, claiming that one-third of all mobile searches have local intent. In other words, when a user is searching for an item online, they’ll want to know if a local retailer has that product in stock. Hence, Google is now tying in local inventory data to their shopping search results. Not to be outdone, Microsoft’s Bing is now enhancing their maps with location-specific tips left by foursquare users.

To go a step further, when you start combining location data with augmented reality, the latter suddenly becomes a lot less gimmicky and a lot more game-changing. We previously told you about Yelp’s augmented reality feature, but now were seeing things like a Beatles-specific tour of London or a browser that helps you find the nearest subway station (see the video above). Then there’s Block Chalk, which lets you leave (and read) virtual notes for and about your neighborhood. Post that you’ve lost your kitty (aww), found a great restaurant, or just vent about that unidentifiable scent coming from your neighbor’s house. (We’ll cover more augmented reality in an upcoming post – we’re about due for another roundup.)

Whew. Let’s give you a second to digest all this info. But don’t get overwhelmed by the details; the one thing you need to take away from this entry is that location absolutely matters. Let’s start marketing with that in mind.

They think we’re right, of course. Duh.

One question that popped up throughout the week was whether a brand should be creating their own apps versus advertising in (or sponsoring) existing and emerging apps. Allison Mooney, VP of Emerging Trends at Mobile Behavior, admitted that advertisers and agencies are still more inclined to build their own apps, presumably because the brands assume they can more completely control the user experience. Of course, that “experience” may only have an audience of a couple of people, since consumers are looking for the most useful and entertaining apps whether or not they’re branded. When a branded app goes up against something that’s been created to explicitly address a need or niche, it’s not surprising that there are only a handful of branded apps that break out of the pack.

However, there’s a golden opportunity hidden at the intersection of brands and independent apps. Since app-makers struggle to stand out in oversaturated app stores, many have found that partnering with a brand (and piggybacking on that brand’s marketing budget) can help drive awareness and adoption of their app. Meanwhile, the brands benefit from partnering with apps that do a far better job of engaging with consumers, enabling these brands to connect with consumers in far more compelling ways.

For instance, why do you think we focused our recent Potty Posting on foursquare instead of Gowalla? Because having a lowercase name makes them cooler? No, because foursquare’s managed to get the attention of the public by piggybacking on their high-profile partners! Ask the foursquare guys why their Bravo tie-in was such a success, and they’ll bluntly tell you the obvious: highlighting the campaign in a TV commercial is a pretty damn good way to build awareness. Similarly, the success of Kraft’s iFood assistant isn’t just a product of the public’s undying allegiance to the Oreo: Kraft’s Director of Innovation and Consumer Experience points out that promoting the app across all of Kraft’s marketing channels was necessary to introduce the app to the public. Mooney called out Charmin’s sponsorship of the pre-existing Sit or Squat app as the ultimate success story, arguing that the brand has become so entwined with the app that most people instinctively refer to the program as “Charmin’s Sit or Squat.”

All of these examples demonstrate that marketing an app is no different than marketing any traditional, offline product. You still need to break through the clutter, you still need to challenge indifference when consumers are browsing app markets, and you still need to engage in an integrated, multichannel approach. Brands and marketers can teach tech upstarts a thing or two about these areas, while the app-makers can bring their out-of-the-box solutions to brands looking for innovative partners. Everybody wins, including the consumer.

But what makes an app successful, anyway? Flurry’s Sean Galligan makes an excellent point that different apps engage users in different ways. He notes that social networking apps average nearly 20 (short) sessions per month, while news app average nearly 10 minutes per (infrequent) session. For the aforementioned Kraft app, about 60% of users continued to use the app after six months, which is commendably high in an environment with hundreds of thousands of apps to choose from. So, this begs another question when considering a leap into the mobile app space: what exactly is the point here? Are you trying to drive frequent, short interactions, or long, immersive engagement? Do you know why you’d want one over the other? You’d better.

Of course, this is all assuming that apps are the way your brand wants to go. With the Android platform finally making some inroads on Apple’s dominance of the app world (and the impending arrival of the Windows phone), it’s becoming increasingly clear that app-makers will need to create several versions of their apps for each mobile operating system in order to succeed. Boy, that sounds like a lot of work, especially when the mobile browsing experience continues to improve. As depicted in the chart above (from a report by Taptu), the 170,000 or so apps in Apple and Google’s app stores don’t look so hot when they’re up against 325,000+ mobile web pages (and growing). Moreover, a lot of those apps are for fun and games, while the business of driving sales is increasingly occurring on the mobile web (see the image to the right for the breakdown, or click the Taptu link above for more details).

So, we go back to the question we asked when we first introduced After the App in our 10 Trends for 2010: are you creating an engaging enough experience to command real-estate on a user’s app menu? Are you sure? If you can’t affirmatively answer “HELL YEAH!” then perhaps it’s time to focus on improving your mobile web experience. Chances are, you’ll have a leg up on your competition as the mobile browsing experience continues to improve.

More SXSW goodness comin’ right up!

As we alluded to in yesterday’s post, today we’re going to talk a bit about touch. Specifically, where touch is at, where it’s going, and why it’s finally relevant in-store at the point-of-purchase.

Oh, and why it may be inherently obsolete.

In one panel, hosted by some digital agency named Sharp Flounder or Cutting Shark or something I can’t remember, the participants considered the way that today’s touch interfaces are creating more engaging in-store experiences. By now, we know the obvious benefits to the consumer; in a world where Immersive Sensory Experiences are the norm, the consumer has come to expect this level of engagement. However, the panelists made the great point that these experiences improve the experience for the salesforce as well.

When the immersive experience makes the selling process more enjoyable for the consumer, the interaction between the consumer and salesperson becomes collaborative (to find the right solution) instead of combative. The presenters gave the example of a car dealer working with the Microsoft Surface, guide the customer through the normally complex buying decision via a show-not-tell virtual experience. (Here’s an example created for Audi.) Furthermore, consumers now demand both customization (requiring enormous choice) and simplified shopping (requiring cultivated choice), which a standard brick-and-mortar retailer (and especially a car dealer) cannot realistically address this with their on-hand inventory. Instead, the customer can get all the tech specs from the internet (which they’re increasingly doing anyway), while the salesperson can focus on addressing the customer’s concerns and unanswered questions.

But, that’s not all. It also helps the bottom line. Take consumer electronics, for example. The category happens to be plagued with a lot of buyer’s remorse, as people realize they just spent hundreds of dollars on a product that’s bound to be obsolete/dropped/soooo-not-cool in a matter of months. Returns ensue, and everyone loses. But, the presenters discovered that they were able to significantly reduce buyer’s remorse (and thus, returns) by enabling consumers to personalize the products before they even entered the store. Using a touchscreen kiosk elsewhere in the mall, consumers could walk themselves through the entire shopping and customization process before they even set foot in the store; see the video below for more.

Then again, touch is “today.” Tomorrow, is touch-less.We’re starting to see this already with augmented reality, which is sort-of-almost touchless at this point (since most applications require you to hold something in front of the camera – although that’s about to change, too). We’ll dedicate a whole post later, but the LEGO video at the top of this post should be enough to get you thinking about how the point-of-purchase experience can be seriously augmented (pun intended) with these services. How engaging is the process of picking up a box of LEGOS, looking at the picture on the front, and maybe shaking it around a bit? Not much. But, seeing the completed project in 3D (and with live action) brings to life the true potential of what’s in the box. (Should we mention that it’s Delighting the Consumer with a Hidden Surprise? Yeah, we should.)

But, no, tomorrow won’t require you to hold up a marker to a camera. Tomorrow will be gesture-based. Gesture-based experiences are right around the corner (expect Project Natal to hit sometime in the next twelve months and change everything), and will inevitably be more intuitive and user-friendly because they mimic typical human movements. Without going too deep into the future, we can see how this will work with a current technology: RFID tags. RFID-enabled products are now capable of being reactive, as demonstrated by the Sniff dog (shown in the video below). When different tagged objects are placed near the dog, he (I assume it’s a he?) responds in a variety of different doggy-dog ways. And this, folks, is a simple illustration of where interactive, immersive, engaging experiences are going. There’s no intermediary (a computer screen, a kiosk, etc.) coming between the user and the immersive experience, engaging the consumer in unprecedented ways.

Man, the future’s gonna be cool, isn’t it? More to come tomorrow.

As we’ve mentioned in our discussions of Immersive Sensory Experiences, the increasing prevalence of engaging technologies has driven consumers’ expectations through the roof.  No longer confined to early adopters, it’s the everyday consumer who now expects evermore immersive experiences from all forms of media.

While Steve Jobs can’t take all the credit for this trend, we’d be remiss if we didn’t suggest that the rise of the iPhone has been among the most important forces transforming consumers’ perceptions of interactive technologies. Case in point: Kraft Foods has embraced the new Samsung Diji-Touch vending machine that was openly modeled after the iPhone. Sure, the slick interface and animated movements are certain to catch consumers’ attention, but the machine also champions practicality over mere gimmicks. 360 degree product views are complemented by nutritional info and promotions, literally at your fingertips. Furthermore, the attractive interface won’t be the only lesson learned from the iPhone; these vending machines are equipped with the potential to insert gaming into everyday life.

But, not every brand has the space (or the interest) to commit to a giant vending machine. Fortunately, if you’ve got a wall to spare, you’re now halfway to an interactive touchscreen. A thin new film from Portugal-based Displax can be affixed to a variety of surfaces, bringing all the interactivity of a Microsoft Surface to any location where you’d like to catch a consumer’s eye. (More information is available from Wired).

Here’s the point: technology is bringing interactivity everywhere, and your consumer will soon expect nothing less. The notion that your customers aren’t the target for these developments is increasingly bunk. Whatever tactic you pursue, anything lacking interactivity will be perceived as uninteresting at best, if not downright irrelevant. Conservative or not, there’s not a brand in the world who wants to be perceived in that light.

Now’s the time to start planning.

Let’s not make that mistake again.

In October, we mentioned that the size debate between smartphones and e-readers and netbooks and notebooks could be completely sidestepped by mini projection technologies. With the announcement of the Light Touch Interactive Projector, we expect to see more of this technology in your future.

The Light Touch projects an interactive screen that can serve as a keyboard, a scrolling menu of images, a point of sale tool… or pretty much any other application you can dream up. With wi-fi and Bluetooth technology, there’s quite a lot of potential for this device to provide an immersive sensory experience (one of our 10 Trends for 2010) in-store. This technology’s potential for engagement, customized recommendations, and interactivity provides a huge opportunity for retailers that depend on cultivating a distinctive shopping experience (and the manufacturers whose sales depend on these environments).

Don’t say we didn’t try to warn you.

Thanks to big-time friend of The Source Nick Evans for the tip!