It’s that time of year again. When we start thinking about Austin and ribs and digital friends and panel nerd badges. But first, we have to take care of business and do our job influencing, or at least commenting on, the submitted panels and talks.

Granted there is no shortage of great panels up at SxSW this voting season. In fact there are more than I’ve had the time to plow through. So, just in case you’re in the same over extended situation, I thought I’d share a few that Mullen colleagues and I have either submitted or been invited to join in hopes that they meet with your approval and ultimate vote. Of course, in the spirit of honest engagement, don’t vote for anything you wouldn’t actually want to attend. I’m not a big fan of the popularity contest approach to anything.

Ad Agencies Need A New Mindset To Survive

Submitted by Edward Boches:  read more and vote

If the advertising agency is to survive in an era when the reigns of media have been transferred from a few professionals to 2 billion individuals, it will have to revamp its entire way of thinking. The mindset will have to shift from thinking about target audiences to communities. Strategy will require more insight about a consumer’s relationship to media and technology rather than just how she feels about the brand. The team will change entirely to include production, mobile, and experience design in addition to art and copy. And the consumer will play an active, rather than passive role, in the creation and sharing of everything. What does an ad agency have to do to survive? What are the practices it must unlearn? What new skills will it require? This panel, comprised of agency leaders, each in a different stage of evolution, will explore the challenges and offer ideas.

Radian6 and Mullen Hijack the Superbowl

Submitted by Christian Madden: read more and vote

In 2010 (and again in 2011) Mullen and Radian 6 turned the Superbowl, an old media event, into a new media event. With a simple website, a hashtag, and real time sentiment analysis, Brandbowl2010.com analyzed Twitter conversation to rate the game’s commercials in real time.  Find out how sentiment analysis can fuel a creative idea and how an analog event can be converted into a digital experience. It’s a model that anyone can replicate.

Augmented Reality and the Launch of the Olympus Pen

Submitted by Michael Bourne: read more and vote

Augmented reality usually sucks. But this example is pretty good, (note it was done by Mullen). The agency, Total Immersion and Wired collaborated to create and run the first ever augmented reality camera demo.

What were the challenges in creating a fully functional “digital” digital camera that shot videos and still images using a computer webcam and what did WIRED learn in the process of activating the creative in its first iPad edition? Interested?  Give this panel a vote.

To see the rest of this post and some other panels we all agree are noteworthy, click here.

The integrated campaign has TV, social media and print that links to an augmented reality 3D experience.

Stephen Mietelski, svp, group creative director at Mullen, said “While using the camera, we came upon a simple and powerful idea: Rather than telling people “Look What You Can Do,” let’s show them what they can do with the PEN by using the camera to produce all of the campaign advertising visuals.”

Readers of the June print issue of Wired and the July print issue of Popular Photography will find an augmented reality tip-in card shaped like the Olympus PEN (actual size). The camera card peels off the insert and serves as a marker for use in front of a webcam. Simple instructions for the demo are included and direct users to the Olympus augmented reality site.

“Augmented reality has been used by companies before, but more as a gimmick than as an actual, working, in-depth product demo,” said Mietelski. “This is as close to having the camera in your hands as you can get without actually having it in your hands.”

The end result is a campaign that uses the medium as the message.

Augmented Reality
AR is a new technology that creates an immersive 3D relationship with a consumer via a PC and a webcam. We can take a static piece of advertising and make it come to life in a powerful and provocative way.  Several marketers are already using the technology, including Papa John’s which is affixing AR images to the back of 30 million pizza boxes. Consumers are instructed to hold the box up to a webcam in order to drive an animated 3D 1972 Camaro on their computer screen. Legend has it that Papa John’s CEO, John Schnatter, sold his beloved ‘72 Camaro in 1984 to open his first store. The virtual trip takes you on a cross county tour where you’re also exposed to billboards offering Papa John’s coupons.

But the gold prize in using AR technology goes to Popular Science and General Electric. I called Popular Science last week as I wanted to get the inside skinny on how this evolved and how we could think of AR technology for some of the clients we represent. The entire platform was truly serendipitous but genius nonetheless. Popular Science knew that their July front cover was going to prominently feature a windmill and past GE advertising had featured windmills. They approached GE and proposed a partnership in which consumers would go the pop sci site and hold the front cover in front of a webcam to launch the experience.  General Electric also purchased the cover two spread in the July issue to tie the promotion and platform together.

2D Bar Codes

2D bar codes have been around for a while but it’s a new application that caught my eye with something called the twitter code. As an example, a person downloads the ScanLife app on his iPhone and then takes a picture of a print ad, bus shelter or in-store POP and it automatically sends a predetermined brand tweet to the person’s twitter feed. The person can then add his personal message augmenting the brand tweet and send it out to his followers. This is potentially a powerful way brands can use technology to amplify their reach and create a personal endorsement.

Winning in the new environment is about evolving your content distribution strategy and taking advantage of opportunities that take a static message and turn them into something that is interactive and viral. What do you think of these two new technologies and are there any others that we should be following?