Ad+Geek

As Chief Creative Innovation Officer of JWT New York, James oversees the agency’s creative in the digital space. Outside of the office, he is a U.S. rated table tennis champ and founded the magazine Celebrity Ping Pong, in which he interviews celebrities like Susan Sarandon and art and business whiz kids, while challenging them to ping-pong matches.

This Wednesday, he’ll be a panelist on “Defend the Tweet” for Social Media Week. “Defend the Tweet” will bring together some of the most interesting people on Twitter from the marketing and advertising industries to make their cases in defense of a recent provocative tweet.

What was your social media eureka moment?
I’ve always been more of a twitter than a facebook man. I didn’t have a eureka moment on twitter. It just grew and grew. It goes through phases of being useful and fun.

What do you use on a daily basis and how?
Twitter mostly. I get my my news, both world and industry through that. I follow around 350 people and it’s rare that I miss something. The power of the crowd I guess.

What is hot and what is just hype?
Ping Pong is hot. The rest is hype. 

What do you see as being the next big thing at next year’s conference?
I’m not sure there is anything fundamental that’s going to shift. I see Twitter and Facebook as very set, nothing will topple them in a year. For me, Foursquare and all the other location stuff doesn’t have what it takes to go mass. People use Facebook and Twitter for multiple different reasons, news, photos, mail, chat etc etc. I don’t see how Foursquare etc goes beyond the basic task of checking in. I get that that is fun for some people and still a hugely successful business I just don’t think it’s another Facebook or Twitter.
 
What is the one takeaway you hope everyone gets from your panel?
That I am smarter than them. No, seriously.

Find James on Twitter and Tumblr; Sign up for “Defend the Tweet” here.

As a follow up to our social gaming post, we’re bringing you a Q & A with Josh Shabtai, Emerging Media Strategist at JWT, and a game developer in his spare time. Josh is a panelist on Social Media Week’s Social Gaming: How Social Dynamics are Reshaping Games panel. Register here. 

What was your social media eureka moment?
At the risk of outing myself as a troll, I must say that my knowledge of and interest in social media all stemmed from, well, anti-social activities that were unhindered by geography or time.  In the early 90s, I spent more time in AOL chatrooms, cultivating fake personas and engaging unwitting individuals in horrific, 9600-baud-delivered pranks than doing homework.

In 2000, a group of friends and I from all across the country helped liquidate a promising e-commerce start-up, which opened my eyes to the (in this case, destructive) power of individuals within connected systems.

What do you use on a daily basis and how?
I’m old-school.  I rely on RSS (and occasionally Twitter) to keep myself up to speed on what’s happening in the world.

What is hot and what is just hype?
Quora is one of the most magnificently designed software products I’ve ever encountered.  If they can control a massive influx of people, I genuinely think they have a shot of supplanting a number of popular services.

What do you see as being the next big thing at next year’s conference?
Virtual reality.  I mean, how can you argue with http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104692/ ?

What is the one takeaway you hope everyone gets from your panel?
Whether they know it or not, everyone who has been touched by a social networking utility and its mechanics is playing a game.  We’re just scratching the surface of the genre of social games.

As a follow up to our social gaming post, we’re bringing you a Q & A with Nick Parish, North American Editor for Contagious Magazine. Nick is a panelist on Social Media Week’s Social Gaming: How Social Dynamics are Reshaping Games panel. Register here.

What was your social media eureka moment?
I think everyone has a path of social media eureka moments which revolve around making real connections with other people. Everyone feels the magic when they meet someone in real life that they’ve come to know over the internet, and compares their concept of that person and their actions online with the living breathing talking version. That can be online dating or buying a dresser on Craigslist. Same goes with arguments; the first time you get into a blood-boiling argument on the Internet you pass a sort of barrier. To me, those are the most interesting bits, coming to understand the powerful connections we can create with people who share our interests and goals.

What do you use on a daily basis and how?
Whew, big question…currently running applications include: Mail, Chrome, Firefox, DevonThink, Pomodoro, Dropbox, Spaces, ManyCam, Skype, iChat, Word, TextEdit, Tweetdeck. Frequently accessed webservices/social bits/communities include Facebook (begrudgingly) & Twitter and Google’s suite of stuff, without which I’d be truly lost. Metafilter and Reddit are my favorite community sites. Google Reader tells me ‘from your 300 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 9,359 items, clicked 33 items, starred 10 items, shared 0 items, and emailed 61 items.’ I’ve developed an arcane and possibly foolish system to basically archive anything I touch on Twitter to a bookmarking site, and I spend a lot of time watching Contagious’ output and cataloging all that stuff for further analysis.

What is hot and what is just hype?
I think this question is becoming less and less relevant, but I can’t quite explain why. I’ll try, though. In the last year or so we’ve seen enterprising groups take things that are in the hype cycle’s trough and make fun new things out of them. I hope the cycles created by our anemic attention span and relentless economic machine continue to pump up and churn through emerging technologies–it leaves more room for the inquisitive tinkerers to come through and say ‘oh, what’s this, how does this work.’ It’s like the kid who always had the most fun, newest toys–you knew a few days later their attention would be elsewhere, but that fun toy probably still had some life in it for something. I’m currently obsessed with the Kinect, Minecraft, quadcopters and autonomous flight sequences, Mechanical Turk and whatever a rotating cadre of members of the present-day Invisible College of technology is doing.

What do you see as being the next big thing at next year’s conference?
Definitely jetpacks. Seriously though–with the speed at which companies
seem to be earning venture capital money, I would look for topic ideas from
this article on SXSW 2001: “Is there still an Internet economy?”, “Internet Industry Trends 2001: Is Anyone Making Money?”, How to Survive Takeovers, Acquisitions, Layoffs, Mergers and Other Supposed Career Setbacks”. Etc. Mad-Libs the blanks where appropriate, change “million” to “billion”, there you go.

What is the one takeaway you hope everyone gets from your panel?
I hope people leave the panel understanding the difficult lines games makers
have to walk, between manipulating game mechanics to maximize profit and
making genuinely fun games people want to play.

Quick plug: wrote a guest column for Ad Age that went online yesterday, highlighting some of the topics I’m hoping to touch on in my Social Media Week panel. The panel is entitled “Social Listening Done Right,” and the column lays out a brief primer on what that might entail.

Obviously, the live discussion will be more fun than words on a page (if only because there could be dissenting opinions), but check out the column and let me know what you think. Any questions or issues we should be addressing during the panel?

-Kyle

We’ve all had our Facebook feeds inundated with Farmville activity—a testament to the addictive and viral potential of social games. Shortly after accepting my mom’s friend request on Facebook last year, my News Feed was full of Farmville notifications about her Farmville activity.

Six months into her stint on Farmville, all of the notifications and Farmville activity abruptly stopped. Curious, I jokingly teased my mom that Facebook just wasn’t the same without her Farmville notifications. I asked her why she stopped and she responded, “When I found myself planning my lunch break around my Farmville farming, I realized it wasn’t the most productive use of my time.”

There are powerful lessons here for marketers and content creators. You want engagement? Repeat visitors? Viral sharing? Perhaps a simple challenge and a competitive element is the way to go.

I’ve never attempted to cultivate crops virtually a la Farmville (or physically for that matter), but there are other ways that social games have become a part of my everyday life. I use the Nike+ network to challenge my running friends (and strangers) to distance challenges. Running isn’t always the first thing I want to do when I get up in the morning, but the added incentive of competition (and camaraderie) normally gives me the oomph I need to get moving.  

If you think that social games are just a fad, think again. Social gaming is here to stay, and here are a few indicators as to why:

·       More than 200 million people play social games every month

·       Social gaming is expected to generate $1 billion in 2011

·       It is rumored that RIM will incorporate social gaming to their popular BlackBerry

Join us at JWT on Monday, February 7^th from 9:45 – 10:45 a.m. for Social Gaming: How Social Dynamics are Reshaping Games, a panel that will discuss how social games are becoming more pervasive across all walks of life.

 This panel is moderated by Nick Parish, the North American Editor for Contagious Magazine and will bring together a variety of experts from the gaming industry, including:

 ·      Manny Anekal, Director of Brand Advertising, Zynga New York

·       Bill Clifford, VP, Global Ad Sales, Wild Tangent 

·       Josh Shabtai, Emerging Media Strategist, JWT  

·       Keith Katz, VP of Marketing, Open Feint 

Register for “Social Gaming: How Social Dynamics are Reshaping Games” here.

As a follow up to our gamification post, we’re bringing you a Q & A with Rajat Paharia, founder of Bunchball and a 2011 Social Media Week panelist.  

What was your social media eureka moment?
When I first dialed into a BBS with my 300 baud modem and realized that there was a whole world of content and people inside my 128k Mac.
 
What do you use on a daily basis and how?
Skype for a company-wide chat room
Facebook for seeing what my friends and family are up to
Twitter for gamification news
Techmeme for tech news

What is hot and what is just hype?
Hot: Mobile, Android
Hype: Check-ins for _____ (TV, Music, Wine, E-commerce, etc.)

What do you see as being the next big thing at next year’s conference?
Location-based group-micro-blogging.

What is the one takeaway you hope everyone gets from your panel?
That gamification satisfies user desires, while driving business value.

Since their launch in 2005, Bunchball has helped numerous brands create gamified consumer experiences, ultimately building loyalty and increasing engagement. Most recently, Bravo TV teamed up with Bunchball to gamify their Top Chef All-Stars TV show.

For more insights from Rajat, register for next week’s Social Media Week panel on Gamification and be sure to download Bunchball’s Gamification 101 white paper.

Badges, rewards, earning points and climbing the leaderboards—how can marketers leverage game-like mechanics to increase consumer engagement and build loyalty? During Social Media Week, we’re hosting a panel here at JWT to discuss the way ahead for marketers in the rapidly evolving world of gamification.

Why is gamification important?
In a JWTIntelligence survey, 63 percent of respondents agreed that “making everyday activities more like a game would make them more fun and rewarding.” More than half of the respondents stated that they would keep a closer watch on their behaviors and activities if a layer of competition were added to their everyday lives. When done right, incorporating game mechanics is a great way for brands to keep their consumers engaged and in-tune.

Gabe Zichermann, a gamification thought leader (and Social Media Week panelist), describes gamification’s importance in marketing as such:

 Gamification is rewriting economics for marketing, both in terms of customer acquisition and in terms of loyalty programming. Gamification at its core is a process, and it’s different for everybody. But it’s not like some magic guy behind a curtain who waves this wand and makes everything more fun. It’s incremental. It’s perpetual. I think every corporation will have a chief engagement officer whose job is to focus on nothing but customer engagement as their full-time gig. It’s different from marketing; it’s a very specialized position. And we’re already starting to see elements of that.

 So, what’s next in the world of gamification for marketers and how do can we develop programs to keep our consumers engaged? Join us on Tuesday, Feb. 8 from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. for “Gamify Me: Game Mechanics Have Infiltrated Marketing. What’s the Next Play?” 

Moderator:
-David Rosenberg, Director of Emerging Media, JWT New York

Panelists:
-Gabe Zichermann, Author, Game-Based Marketing
-Rajat Paharia, Founder, Bunchball
-Samantha Skey, Chief Rewards Officer from Recycle Bank
-Manny Anekal, Director of Brand Advertising at Zynga Games 

Register for “Gamify Me: Game Mechanics Have Infiltrated Marketing. What’s the Next Play?” here.

Social Media Week is the largest global event dedicated solely to social media, and it’s happening the week of February 7th. We here at JWT New York are excited to have the Social Media Week Business, Media and Communications Hub right here in our office.

If you’re planning on attending any of the Social Media Week sessions at JWT, keep an eye on this blog (and be sure to follow us on Twitter at @JWTNewYork).
 
We’ll be posting Q&As with some of the panelists and overviews of the panels, and discussing why the panel topics and themes are important in this digital day and age.
 
In the meantime, you can sign-up for Social Media Week Events here, and make sure you take a look at the following events featuring JWT panelists:

Monday, February 7th:
– Opening Keynote by David Eastman, JWT Worldwide Digital Director 
9:30-9:45 a.m.
– Social Gaming: How Social Dynamics are Reshaping Games
9:45-10:45 a.m.

Tuesday, February 8th:
– Gamify Me: Game Mechanics Have Infiltrated Marketing. What’s the Next Play?
2:00-4:00 p.m.

Wednesday, Feb. 9th:
– Social Media Week Panel: Adweek Media and JWT’s ‘Defend the Tweet’ 
6:00-8:00 p.m.

Thursday, Feb. 10:
– Pay Attention! Social Listening Done Right 9:00-11 a.m.

Friday, Feb. 11:
– Check In or Check Out: Avoiding Location-Based Nothingness 9:00-11 a.m.