27 JANUARY 2012

contentAI studios | Portland, OR | http://contentAI.com

True Story:  Once upon a time, a major motion picture Studio had one person assigned to traveling to their global offices to see if the films in development or production had any World Wide Web needs or if there might be any cross promotion potential?  The Distribution, Production and Development executives all said, “no.”

Which happened to be at a time when we were tapping into an online (remember Compuserve!) fan base for a series of novels that were being developed for a motion picture property (which we’d already licensed Electronic Game and merchandising Rights to) – The absolute hub of our activity was our Property’s URL and it’s Forums.  For us, all of the pieces fit together into one large User experience to dip in and out of from various locations.  The term “transmedia” hadn’t been invented.  We didn’t know what we were doing, other than knowing that the Whole Enchilada was a lot cooler than the individual ingredients.

Fast Forward +/- 15 years into the Future.  Today.  OK, technically  a couple of weeks ago at CES in Las Vegas.

The most exciting space for us was the INTEL® booth – OK, “booth” is used loosely, it was the INTEL Command Center at CES.

Featured were INTEL’s “trees” that we saw set up around the Command Center at their disconnected workstations.  Typically, it was different divisions and technologies and their team members focused on their silo of interest, including:

•  Ultrabooks– OK, we love them.  We use them for coding and building our apps (picked up an Asus U21 the first day it shipped)

• AppUP – Desktop apps for Windows machines; with an amazing team working behind the scenes to make the process rapid and enjoyable (See:  Encapsulator).  What an amazing platform and reach – Whether for Enterprise or for Education – Or, for home…(more on that in a minute)

• WiDi – Huh?  Wireless HDMI to bridge between the devices on your couch and your big screen

• Ultrabooks & Nuance Deal:  Lost in the press releases was a remarkable partnership announcement to advance speech recognition on Ultrabooks (yes, that Nuance, the one that really does a lot of the heavy lifting for SIRI).  No mention of this on the floor.

• Smart TV: Formerly the Digital Home Group, the device(s) to bridge from big screen to on-the-couch interface continue to expand.  While we saw competitors such as Panasonic (Vierra) and others all migrating to the “television app store” experience, the INTEL group, when coupled with other offerings within INTEL is what creates the groundwork to cohesively extend television to handheld devices.

• INTEL Embedded / Retail (though their presence at the Retail’s Big  Show the following week is what we were sorry to miss; Nice article HERE):  Update: Now found @IntelSys,  Intelligent Systems

You see, we at contentAI studios are really “content people.”  We’re storytellers.  We’ve worked on motion pictures, television, internet television and interactive television…oh, and mobile experiences.

Why is INTEL® massively exciting for us?

Because the “future” we thought was 2-5 years away is already here today.  If you just connect the dots.   If you envision how those silos all interconnect at a content experience level. ..

Our contentAI studios platform was originally created to produce emotionally engaging, personalized interactive experiences with film and television characters on hand held devices.

It looks like this:

That’s the image that’s been in our PowerPoint® deck for about a year.  It was a vision of our “Gen 4” UI.  It was science fiction.

But, looking at INTEL during CES, we realized this could exist now.  We can deliver this experience today.

The idea that the Audience can engage in one-to-one, personalized “conversations” (text or voice) with a character on television (Pause the linear show and engage in a one-to-one chat); where the consumer discovers new and alternate storylines…where Brands have all new interactive real estate (in someone’s hand).  All possible.  Now.  Today. #wayCool

When we looked around at INTEL’s “trees” at CES, we saw the forest.

We feel that in order to make this truly exciting, the content that is offered needs to be more than games or fancy new, intuitive cable menus.  The content needs to connect on an emotional level.   After all, “television” was always a storytelling device in our homes.  Tapping into that engagement level is what will both sell devices and also satisfy the new interactive audience.

And, what about the opportunities for retail solutions with these same tools?  Absolutely possible.

Where does will it start?

With the question:  Why doesn’t every Saturday morning cartoon allow kids to directly engage with the characters via a conversational interface?

We know the issues from the Television production side.  Someone needs to slap the Unions on the upside of their head so they don’t prohibit Writers and Actors from participating in these new storytelling formats.  Union contracts need to be “living” documents that can be changed year-round to adapt to emerging technologies (rather than showing up 5 years late to the party).  But, that’s another blog post…for another day…

But, the “forest” is much wider and deeper than Saturday morning television – with the contentAI studios’ platform solutions alone, we see ESL schools in China using these tools to improve conversational English.  We see in-store Retail “intelligence” also being delightful and intuitive. . .and more. . .because there’s always more. . .

So, now we need to figure out how to tie the pieces together as a Developer.  Heck, I can’t even tell if my Ultrabook has WiDi?  Or, what device I need to make it so?  Or, if the Smart TV group have an App Store, or if they will be leveraging AppUP?

To navigate through the forest path at INTEL, we are fortunate to have a Senior Community Relations executive who can help steer us.  That kind of one-to-one relationship between INTEL and the Development Community is remarkable – We’ve been extremely impressed with their AppUP team since early 2010 and look forward to weaving our way through more branchs of INTEL in order to realize the potential, from a content Developer’s point-of-view, of their astounding technologies.

While HTML.5, Ultrabooks, WiDi and other technologies all link to one another, it’s the human component within INTEL® that serves as the Pandoran Neural Network…it’s humans that glue it all together…fortunately,  corporations have evolved in the past 15 years compared to  when different motion picture divisions ignored each other (especially digital divisions; and, um, Motion Pictures studios are now paying the price for such early ignorance).

Seeing INTEL’s forest, as an outside Developer, made the trip to Vegas worth every long line, worn out pair of shoes, over-priced everything and endless package of mints that were required for the trek.  For next year’s CES, seeing these devices all playing nicely together and creating all new content experiences is what we’re looking forward to and hope to be a part of.

#CES2012

http://gigaom.com/2011/12/07/interactive-ebooks-take-on-fiction-novels/

While our interactive narrative is a unique branch of “interactive fiction,” seeing this as an emerging topic is terrific.

We are releasing the 2001 MySantaTalk mobile web (and some native app versions) tomorrow!

The URL:  http://m.MySantaTalk.com will redirect to the new app as soon as it’s “live.”

Our new UI is featured — While the UI is still undergoing upgrades and responsive design enhancements, this is a true Ver. 1.0 release as we move out of Beta.

We’re looking forward to the “App of the Week” status from our friends at INTEL’s AppUP…We’ll post links there next week too.

Have a wonderful and safe Holiday Season.

And, have a chat with Santa while you’re out and about, from your mobile!

Oh, right, yes, all of our web properties are undergoing a makeover the next few days…so, that’s our final year-end clean up…

See you at CES?

With our consumer-facing http://mysantatalk.com application just reaching the marketing, one item we’re watching closely is the duration of each Session — MYSANTATALK is potentially much longer than most of our commercial, marketing applications — So, the obvious question is:  Will people engage with interactive mobile entertainment for more than a minute or two?

We are seeing an increasing number of Sessions running in the 8 minute range.  With some as high as 14 minutes.

With the prospect of “hiding” special videos or other valuable elements in conversation and encouraging multiple trips through each story, it’s possible we could increase this number.

Now, we’re all about quality, not quantity.  But, no one is going to hang in there for 10 minutes with something they don’t enjoy; so, we’re pleased to see the Sessions lasting longer than we’d projected.

We hadn’t really thought about this being a “first” in terms of using QR for a Holiday greeting – thanks Helen for the mention — coming from one of the most innovative digital storytellers out there, it’s appreciated…

Looking for the QR Tag?

Happy Holidays.

“Story” means that we start at “A” and end at “Z.” The path through may be non-linear, but, the User is guided to progress through the engagement and reach one (often of many) possible endings.

For mobile Users, this is ideal. The application has contextual awareness of the user (physical location; item they are holding, etc.) and there is an “awareness” of the “scene” that is likely to be played out between the User and the application. This means that the AI characters do not need to be “generalists” or be able to carry on random conversations or answer obscure questions — they need to “motivate” the User to get through the story/engagement.

This can be as simple as providing “item location” data plus providing a relevant mCoupon, or as complex as delivering transmedia story elements from a motion picture to the mobile engagement.

There are a number of Industry or common terms that are used to describe different features of our product.  Depending on your business, you may refer to an automated AI character by a specific name such as ‘virtual agent.’

Here’s the basic breakdown and difference the contentAI platform delivers:

* Our “characters” are motivated to help direct a User to various “end points” in a session

*  In many respects, a “session” is similar to a scene in a film.  Only, with different possible endings

*  Our “characters” are NOT “passive chatbots” waiting for User’s to guess what to ask.  Our “characters” take a more proactive conversational lead

*  Our “characters” can access deep repositories of information, data and even ‘character personality traits” to deepen the conversational experience

*  We refer to our “characters” as being part of an “Interactive Story.”  That refers to the Characters taking the conversational lead and driving the conversation forward.

*  Because humans are humans, they have a certain curiosity about “bots” and try to trick them or test them.  Our “characters” are all designed to humor and entertain humans in this regard — But, then, get them back to “story.”

We’re not particularly partial to any of the standard names for “bots” (and, don’t like “bots” much either).  “Virtual Agents” or “Virtual Guides” works well for many commercial applications.  But, we do think of each “bot” as a “character” that is constructed in the same way film and television characters are constructed.  Only, they have to improvise, but, always “in character.”

These are the salient points:

*  “QR codes are very close to the ‘tipping point,’ and the fourth quarter will push us over the top…”

*  “Carriers are doing their part to create awareness. For example, Sprint is preloading the application and Verizon is using codes in marketing….”  (OUR NOTE:  T-Mobile is doing a terrific job as well)

* QR Tags:  “established the dialogue with the consumer…”  (OUR NOTE:  Particularly, when using Conversational Mobile Marketing!)

*  “Codes offer a great way to drive people into the store, or incite purchase on the mobile device…”

*  “Ensure that the consumer’s experience and privacy of interaction is safeguarded in all instances….”

*  “Have fun and get creative in the campaigns that you deploy…”

*  “You have to provide end users with compelling content at the end of a scan…”

OK, for anyone who’s read our Posts here about QR Tags, this concise summary is going to appear rather redundant.  We aren’t in the QR Tag business, but, we do launch our Interactive, Conversational Engagement from QR and 2D Tags (or, even image detection that resolves to a mobile URL).  We think they can be part of an intuitive and natural User Engagement.

The only thing lacking in the summary was raising the questions:  Can QR Tags lead to conversational text engagement, since that’s how Users typically use their mobile devices?  Or, can a QR Tag lead to a Virtual Agent conversation?  Can a QR Tag deliver great Customer Relations Management?

Of course they can.

By working from a specific location, as well as specific activity focus of that location, this restricts the sphere of knowledge that a Virtual Agent has to consider — It only needs to be context aware. Additionally, it allows the Virtual Agent (or “Character”) to “take the lead” in a conversational engagement and serve as a location guide. Simply, they  appear smarter, with less raw data, since they interact within the limitations of a specific time/place.

Creating mini-LBS networks with a Virtual Agent for a Retailer, that is based on opt-in technologies without the need of an “App” — using 2D and QR Tags — is fast and affordable.

The rule of thumb is that a Virtual Agent costs 1/50th the cost of human customer service. Our Virtual Agents and Virtual Characters take the “best of” a Brands customer relations knowledge and roll it into a single entity.

Or, where Location Based Services (LBS) are touted as the next sliced-bread killer.

Or, where the success/failure of QR and 2D Codes in the US is debated.

It’s great to find some reasoned and objective discussions.  Recently, the post:  MOBILE APPS…ALL SAUSAGE, NO SIZZLE from DIGITAL MINISTRY by David Jarvis was an example of extremely well written and considered thought on the subject with more perspective than most, concluding  with his call for:

“I strongly feel our industry groups should work towards some sort of commonality, leadership and self-regulation now to avoid another potential massive bursting bubble to the ultimate detriment of everyone.”

What I believe Jarvis is seeing, as we do, is that Brands and Agencies are already starting to realize that much of their mobile marketing efforts in the past year have been based on hype-and-circumstance.  That is, they’ve followed the “technology” and forgotten the consumer.  Below are the few points we feel are relevant and speak to how contentAI studios and interactive conversational mobile engagement will be a lasting and valuable platform:

*  LBS – There will be the emergence of private, Brand-to-Consumer LBS services that do NOT require Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, etc.   Private being the operative word.  Cutting out the middleman being another value.  A QR/2D Tag can launch a location based engagement, with some Session Management (we offer) and fun game or conversational exchange (we offer).

The Forrester Research seems overly kind is estimating that there may be 1% of the US market who are active Users of LBS Services.  Our estimates are about 1/4 of that.  Regardless, LBS services are not and may never be mainstream.  While private, direct Location based engagement between a Brand, Retailer, Restaurant may have some legs, if done well.

*  QR/2D – As above, they should be used for location based engagement in addition to brand packaging.  Their failure to date is that they are rarely used in integrated campaigns where the “story” that starts with print (a magazine ad) is then extended to the mobile engagement.  Once Tags are used as a “bridge” to extend storied engagement, Users should start seeking these out.  The current Tag-to-Push campaigns are examples of wasting people’s time.

* Mobile Web, Apps & SMS - How do people use their mobile devices for their non-marketing communication?  Voice is in decline, Text is increasing (including a 50% increase in mobile IM last year).  Mobile video chat is really voice with images, so, it may level off Voice.  But, Text is King.

We are going to see (we know, since we’re working on this), more mobile web chat.  No need for SMS or IM.  Apps will start to incorporate chat functions within them (we’re offering our platform for App integration).  SMS pricing will drop (between Twitter and Google, someone is going to get it down to near-free) and SMS will remain an effective conversational communication platform.

Brands who want to “start a conversation” with their Customers should look no further than the tools Customers use in their day-to-day conversations with friends.  Mobile is a perfect device for conversational engagement.  It’s remarkable that so little of it has been done.

We hope to be a part of very successful campaigns that point to win:win scenarios for Brands and Consumers with their mobile engagement.  We want Consumers to “want more,” not to have turned away from mobile marketing due to App-burnout, Location Based privacy invasion or lack of value, or a failure to deliver appropriate Content within context to where a Customer took their valuable time to engage with a campaign (i.e. pushing a video to someone on a street corner).

The main reason for their appeal is that a 2D/QR Tag creates a “bridge” between two Worlds:  Print and Mobile.  As Producers with a background in cross-platform (transmedia) storytelling for nearly 15 years, in the past, we’ve dealt with disconnected platforms…now, 2D/QR Tags provide a “bridge” between two prime story locations.  Basically, adding a “bridge” to span one media to another makes “transmedia” more intuitive for the End User.

What will this look like?

The most basic example is the Children’s cereal box.  They are deeply engaging and almost always include some storied elements.  With a 2D/QR Tag you can migrate the User to a complementary and allied interactive story on a mobile device.  Done well, the User will acquire story information from the mobile experience that will help them complete their understanding of the story on the IRL physical box in front of them.

Because a bridge, once built, allows you to travel in both directions.