Ink and Paper: So Long and Farewell

If you’re of a certain age, born anytime during the age of television and right up until the early 1990s, then it’s likely you’ll remember the iconic educational commercials: kiddies’ faces would light up at the sight of their first encyclopedia collection and parents who would be seen, usually at a kitchen table, considering and calculating the financial investment – which for many, was no small undertaking. Nevertheless, the multi-volume collections stood proud on bookshelves in living rooms and home libraries across the globe. In an age before the Internet, the information superhighway was paved with ink and paper, not gigabytes and downloads.

As a public relations professional who has mailed, faxed and emailed her fair share of press releases and press kits (yes I’m that old) to journalists and clients, I was a bit saddened - but not surprised - by the news that Encyclopedia Britannica, a 244-year-old institution of somewhat portable knowledge would cease production of its print edition. The company, which releases updates every two years, announced that 2010’s 32-volume set was its last, already about two years out of date.

In the Case of Hard Copies vs. Hard Drives Where Do You Stand?

While Britannica publisher Jorge Cauz tried to soften the nostalgic blow to print fans, rightly pointing out the need to fully adapt to the digital age and that print sales of Britannica’s encyclopedia were less than 1 percent of the company’s total sales, my sadness isn’t based on nostalgia alone.

Rather, the printed end of Britannica is but another sign that the ink and paper world many of us grew up in continues to weaken. While some lament the emotional connections rooted with older paper products – it’s musty, humidity-induced smell, it’s aged, crinkled look, that, like the lines on an elderly person’s face, suggest wisdom as much as years, the print world’s shuttering raises very real concerns over data storage and information preservation, and what people in the broadly defined information industry (including Public Relations) should do about it and how we should advise our clients.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting the first thing we do is advise clients to invest in off-property climate-controlled storage facilities with copies of all their work. Nor am I suggesting a return to the stone tablet and chisel. I’m suggesting that before we all embrace the paperless office connected with our laptops and iPads and smartphones (and any other digital devices that are coming down the pipeline, we should recognize some of that traditional medium’s advantages over digital. And in some instances, there’s still nothing better than a paper back up. It may be cumbersome, it may feel antiquated, but it’s tangible – you can touch it, smell it, hold it. Combined, ink and paper can do a number on almost all of your senses.

Paper’s greatest strength, perhaps, is its ability to degrade slowly. If untouched and kept in a cool, low humidity location that prevents the formation of paper-eating microbial life, the written pages of history can last hundreds of years. And while it wasn’t paper, but rather a mix of parchment and papyrus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered from 1947 to 1956, survived in that undisturbed state in caves for more than 2,000 years. I’d give you the odds of my laptop’s hard drive lasting that long, but it’d be impossible. Why? Without near-constant backups, and simply retrieving digitally stored data, the magnetic material that encodes the data will fail. What’s more, digital data needs to be kept in a format that future devices will be able to read and translate into useful information. For the most part all that’s required for a paper “translator” is a human brain and a pair of eyes. Last time I checked there’s a nearly 7 billion stockpile of those resources lying around.

To be sure, at a certain level, print material suffers similar shortcomings as digital. Imagine for instance, that in the distant future, there’s no written translation for English. That means that even if the data is stored properly, there’s no one left who can decipher it – no matter how many billions of brains or eyes are trained on the problem.

But paper also has contemporary benefits when it comes to the environment – and a businesses budget. While today’s gadget makers love to taught the environmentally-friendly and cost-effective nature of digital data storage, the fact remains that paper, made from trees, is considered a renewable resource and can be further recycled. Digital, however, requires a significant amount of raw materials, its parts are often hard to reuse, data recovery, if possible at all, can be costly, and digital’s energy demands are continuous. For businesses, that means even more cost.

While the truly paperless office is probably decades or more away, and data shows the global print industry still grew 1 percent in 2010 and likely will continue growing at a 1 to 1.5 percent rate through 2016 – even without Britannica’s help – it’s a good idea to remind ourselves and our clients that the print medium isn’t necessarily the dinosaur it’s portrayed to be.

In 2,000 years, it’s probable that at least something of the original 244-year printed history of the Encyclopedia Britannica will survive. Maybe a vintage copy of Britannica’s final edition will be read on its 2,000^th birthday in the year 4010? As for what will exist of it’s now all-digital content, remains to be seen. In fact, print out this blog post today, put it somewhere safe and read it to yourself in the future as a 2012 “I told you so.”

To our clients and everyone else: happy reading and happier data storage – in whichever analog or digital format you prefer.

Mobilizing and Monetizing The Lobby Experience

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Hotel Executive.

Jackpot!

That’s the exclamation (not to mention double entendre) that’s likely doing cartwheels inside the heads of corporate higher ups and casino/hotel bookkeepers that are busy tallying their property’s profits. It’s a joy especially potent considering that a large portion of the green in their piggy banks stems from those very same gaming additions.

It may seem obvious to any Las Vegas traveler who’s ever stepped foot in the MGM Grand, The Bellagio, or Mandalay Bay, but it’s important to remember that at sometime, at some point, hotel designers reached this no-brainer conclusion: Instead of building casinos and hotels as separate structures, why not build them as single entities? Better still, why not pair the hotel and casino branding? That way, room rates, the mainstay for a hotel’s revenue, can be partnered with an entirely new income stream: gambling money. Everybody knows tourists are coming to cities like Las Vegas to try their hand (and luck) at the one-armed bandit. Why not give hotel guests what they want right in the lobby, and monetize the experience?

A simple idea, for sure, but it’s the aesthetic and business success at the root of the world-famous Las Vegas strip. And when it comes to creating revenue opportunities in common spaces, the burgeoning world of mobile, digital signage and location-aware technologies could learn a thing or two. Like the resort-casino model, mobile’s next frontier - or certainly a frontier as it relates to hotels, is the lobby. It’s a potential revenue, entertainment and loyalty source so significant that hoteliers who choose to mobilize their lobbies should be shouting “jackpot” too.

Mobile’s Winning Combination: Engage, Entertain, Enjoy

Of all the places mobile technology has reached, (through smartphones or tablets) it’s surprising that the hotel lobby has yet to be tapped – even less so than the hotel room, which is beginning, finally, to find its digital footing.

And as an “always on” technology, with penetration rates exceeding 95% for standard phones and upward of 64% for smartphones (in the 25-34 age group within the United States), a central and social meeting place like a hotel lobby is the ideal location to further engage guests throughout the booking and hotel stay process. But also through that same technology, sow the seed for future visits through the technology’s entertainment value allowing guests to download games or video content and continue the mobile hotel marketing experience well beyond the lobby’s main entrance, furthering the customer connection.

In fact, some 82% of business travelers polled in a 2011 Travelport survey said that they expect every hotel room they visit to be WiFi accessible by 2016, no, ifs, ands or buts. Travelport also found that already 56% of business travelers search and book their stays via their mobile device. Google, too, has reached similar conclusions, finding that nearly 60% of personal travelers have looked for travel-related information through their phone or tablet. In other words, travelers of both sets, expect hotels services and amenities to go where they’re already leading.

Hotel Lobby 1.0 versus Hotel Lobby 2.0

Think about a hotel’s loyalty and ROI possibilities and imagine the following scenario. A customer walks into a hotel lobby exhausted from their late-night travels and delayed flight. The last thing on their mind is having to put on that obligatory smile for the front desk and begin the check-in process.

It goes something like this: a hotel guest fishes for their credit card in a cluttered wallet, obtains a magnetic card room key, learns about check-out times, the continental breakfast, and collects a smattering of printed material –some of which might be out of date – and all of it, decidedly so last century in terms of paper and ink technology. Then there’s the added hotel expense of having to pay employees to staff on what can be graveyard shifts. None of this is a recipe for revenue or loyalty success.

Now consider this. A mobile lobby has the potential to radically change this scenario. Imagine instead a tech-centric experience where that same travel-weary customer walks in. But this time, instead of the traditional static entranceway, the guest is surrounded by a collection of interactive digital “smart” signs. Using Bluetooth technology that detects a phone’s proximity to the sign, (and for privacy reasons, not the guest’s exact location) the sign immediately sends the guest’s phone a timely relevant message about their stay. Upon a guest’s opt-in response, the sign can begin sending the guest coupons to the hotel’s restaurant or bar, upgrade packages, or it can even send the phone an augmented reality map of directions to the guest’s room, the fitness center or the pool. Need to find what’s around town? No worries there either as the digital sign-phone partnership all but does away with the need for the concierge. And no need for pen and paper in this scenario either.

And with companies like Orbitz, (which launched its Orbitz-Hotels app for iPad last summer), and Priceline, (that added a “Tonight-Only Deals” to its iPad app in October), estimating upward of 60% to 65% of mobile users book their trips the same day of their stay, finding new ways to engage the traveler both before and after their trip has never been more important. Even if a trip is booked within 24-hours of a stay, that doesn’t mean the proverbial wheels start turning long before that.

The Future (Is Almost) Here: Hotels Mobilizing their Mobile Effort

Little by little hotel chains and technology solution providers are starting to get digital sign’s mobile message. And like the hotel-casino model, they are starting to cash in. In spring 2011 Canada-based iSIGN Media, a provider of location-aware mobile advertising partnered with RTown Communications, also of Canada, to yield the perfect duo: iSIGN supplied the “smart” software and RTown, a digital media marketer, supplied the digital signs within hotel properties. Distributed through a system of some 27,000 hotel rooms in 346 locations throughout Canada, the network effectively delivers a host of branded content, special offers, coupons, discounts, loyalty program messages and other rich-media offerings of guests’ choosing. And by opening up a digital signage network to outside advertising, hotels can accept ads from companies looking to sell to travelers. In addition to delivering real-time content via in-room TV, hotels took the added step of delivering their content via digital signage in hotel commerce areas and even outdoors.

In a related digital move, Wyndham Hotel Group, in conjunction with the MCG, in summer 2011 launched a text to win campaign linked to the PGA FedEx Cup. The hotel chain was looking to increase interaction with hotel guests and through the campaign, offer rewards. Additional community outreach was achieved by donations, issued through Wyndham’s charity arm, Wishes By Wyndham. While the campaign did not rely on lobby-based digital signage, it’s the unique kind of guest engagement that such signs in the future might be able to better promote. Rather than just receiving a simple text, imagine if a rich-media image of a 3-D golf ball had come off a digital screen, offering some discount at a nearby golf course? Along with the appropriate text to connect the image to the cause or promotion, greater redemption rates seem likely. It’s also the type of social experience that, if launched in a lobby setting, might set the stage for further in-lobby and social media-driven conversation.

But more on that in the section that follows...

From the Jetway to the Jetsons: Welcome to the Kinder, Gentler Lobby

Ultimately lobby 2.0 won’t just be about the technology. In an ironic twist, it’ll be about how the technology is bringing people together in more genuine ways. As mentioned above, the ability to connect guests to each other in meaningful ways, (say for example, guests looking to organize a hotel-based tour group for the city they’re visiting and an offering from the tour group incentivizing its use via smartphone and digital signs) will help drive both online and offline conversations.

Increasingly, the linked, synched and wired lobby will take a more living room-like or Starbucks approach where guest spend more time hanging out and interacting with their mobile gadgets and other guests who are using them as well, rather than using the lobby as an austere “waiting area” before embarking on the next part of their day. Hotels like A-Loft, Hyatt, Hyatt Place, Marriott Courtyards, and Hilton’s Home2 Suites extended stay brands have already begun installing mega-sized touch-screen TVs that display information like the weather and day-trip excursion information. While that’s a first step, imagine if those touch screen TVs, like digital signs, began offering branded content?

The A-Loft hotel brand is also testing its "smart check in” technology. Starwood Preferred Guest program members are sent a radio frequency identification (RFID) keycard in the mail. On the day of a guest’s arrival, a text message is sent to their mobile device with a room number, allowing the guest to bypass the front desk entirely. And according to David Strom, writing for ReadWrite Enterprise, the technology is in place at A-Lofts in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, and London. Also, the Oslo Comfort Xpress hotel has automated lobby kiosks that dispense RFID room cards. Admittedly, these technological advancements risk bypassing the lobby altogether. But it’s incumbent on the next generation of interactive digital sign designers to find ways to the keep the digital conversation in the lobby.

Continuing this look into the future, next generation digital signage, as seen by Samsung’s Transparent Smart Window at the recent 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, will merge the aesthetic of real windows with the virtual world. With advanced touch-screen technology, the 4-inch thick screens will allow up to 50 simultaneous “points of contact” or users.

Revenue Per Square Foot: From Slots to Signs

Anyone who’s been to a Las Vegas casino, or any gaming establishment from California to Monte Carlo, knows that it’s the slot machine – not the table game games – that generate the most revenue per square foot. About to turn 117, slot machines have for decades proven their worth to the hotels who’ve turned their lobbies into gaming halls, giving guests what they want, when they want it and in close proximity to their hotel rooms.

The parallels with in-lobby digital signage are striking. Both technologies – one from the 19th century and another from the 21st – engage the guest, build loyalty, and of course, improve return on investment.

Maybe the next generation of a casino-hotel’s digital signage will feature interactive images of slot machines where through contactless data transfer (NFC or Bluetooth connectivity) guests play the slots through their mobile devices? Instead of winning cash, players might receive coupons, discounts and loyalty rewards redeemable at the hotel.

Whether it is casinos, hotels, motels, or any lodging establishment in between, mobilizing the lobby is the revenue and loyalty way forward. Tech-savvy and mobile-equipped travelers continue to lead the way. It’s time for hoteliers to gather their resources and mobilize their lobbies today and hit the digital signage jackpot today.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Hotel Executive.

An Internet Hot Spot’s Cold Response: When Calling Something an ‘Experiment’ is no Safeguard from Critics

In one of the early scenes from the dystopian 70s cult classic Soylent Green the camera shows a largely homeless and grotesquely overpopulated New York City street whose riotous masses are cleared with dump trucks – called scoops – treated more like rubbish than people. And in later scenes the audience learns not only is prostitution legal, but the women that come with the little remaining luxury property that’s left are called “furniture.” Nice.

If only treating people like objects was confined to Charlton Heston-starring science fiction.

Instead, the recent marketing misstep by BBH Labs, the innovation arm of the international marketing agency BBH, has brought us all a notch lower on the “soylent slide.” Earlier this week, at the annual tech-fest better known as the SXSW technology conference, BBH Labs hired 13 volunteer homeless people to stand in as human mobile hot spots. Carrying Wi-Fi devices and wearing t-shirts that read: “I’m [name] a 4G Hotspot,” the volunteers were enlisted to help prevent the overload of the existing mobile network, a common occurrence at tech-crowded events. It was also intended as a conversation starter – homeless workers would have an opportunity to speak with mobile users about their plight and discuss America’s homeless problem. And who knows, maybe a chance encounter would aid their employment and housing prospects?

In fact, Saneel Radia, the director of innovation at BBH Labs, who was quoted in a New York Times story about the Austin, Texas event, seemed utterly surprised by the public backlash.

“We saw it as a means to raise awareness by giving homeless people a way to engage with mainstream society and talk to people,” he said. “The hot spot is a way for them to tell their story.”

Somehow I think that positive outcome is unlikely, especially when you start with turning homeless people into an awkward marketing ploy while treating them like glorified telephone poles –albeit telephone poles with enough of a human voice to request that their 4G “customers” consider a donation to help them survive. While it’s true that these unlucky 13 did volunteer for their services and were paid for their efforts (more on that later), the program speaks to the worst kind of human exploitation. It’s one thing to know your actions are exploitative and nevertheless carry them out based on some flawed “greater good” logic, but it’s another level entirely when you’re oblivious to that cruelty.

The marketing carelessness also highlights another disturbing trend related to technology, a term that Chris Klauda, a vice president at D.K. Shifflet & Associates, a travel and hospitality market research company calls, “isolated togetherness” – people in close physical spaces, but remaining disconnected from the “real world” and are instead solely focused on the goings on in their virtual worlds via their smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.

As the technology through which we all communicate continues to advance, becoming more immersive, digitally interactive, and mobile, it’s critical we – not as public relations professionals but as moral, caring, and empathetic members of the human race – remember that treating people with respect isn’t just about asking for someone’s assistance or paying them for their efforts in some endeavor. Nor does calling a marketing misfire a “charitable experiment,” excuse BBH Labs from their decision. That kind of qualified and dare I say bullsh*t language serves no one. In fact, it’s the kind of language PR professionals rely on so often that gives our industry a bad reputation and further fans the flames of the media mess at the heart of this blog post.

For their efforts the 13 volunteers, selected from the Front Steps homeless shelter, earned themselves free t-shirts, $20 a day (which based on an 8-hour work day amounts to $2.50 an hour or about the same legal minimum wage in 1976, and $4.75 below today’s legal minimum), and the opportunity to collect some extra donations.

But if you ask me, and the many others who were similarly disturbed by this story, I think they all got a lot less than they bargained for. Consider this “charitable experiment” a dismal failure, and hopefully one that will not be re-dressed and re-hashed for the next South by Southwest technology conference.

They may not have been called furniture as in Soylent Green, but these 13 volunteers definitely served as a 2012 appliance.

Shame on us all.