The world goes (more) wireless

We’ve had smart devices. We’ve played with the Wii. We’ve seen augmented reality. Next however comes a whole new dimension in interactive technology – full-scale gesture-based control.

Struggling to imagine what I mean? Remember Minority Report where Tom Cruise controlled everything by waving his hands? Well imagine Minority Report but in real-life, accessible to the man on the street and capable of being applied to nearly any device. If you can imagine that, you’ve got the gist of what Mgestyk do (http://www.mgestyk.com/). This super-cool technology company has developed a system that combines powerful hand-gesture processing software with an affordable 3D camera that makes it possible to control almost anything – from iTunes, to gaming, to any Windows application, to shopping. By being able to translate hand movements into commands to control computer applications it makes keyboards, game controllers and mice redundant – race a car on your PS3, steering with just your hands, choose a track on iTunes by flicking your album covers in mid-air, or browse documents on multiple screens moving them from one screen to another.

The technology is still patent-pending but watch this space as it’ll revolutionise personal entertainment and experiential marketing (again)…

The marketing walls are crumbling

Everyone loves to talk about convergence. Well nowhere is this more true than in the world of marketing. We've finally reached a point where ideas truly transcend disciplines. Marketers have long said that ideas were central to what they did and used jargon like "neutral", "holistic", "integrated" and "agnostic" to suggest they thought about the bigger picture and the power of a big idea rather than their own discipline, agency, turf or P&L. But whilst ideas were always front and centre, they were always defined by the discipline from which they came and through which they would be primarily executed.

Well no more (at long last). The rampant proliferation of social technology has changed the way marketers have to operate. Influence has been democratised. Communications has become conversational. No longer are there disciplines in charge of certain types of ideas. No more are there there certain types of agency in charge of the ideation process or the ownership of "the Big idea". Now, there are just smart people. People from all walks of life, all disciplinary persuasions, who understand better than the next guy or girl what a brand needs to achieve and is capable of creating an idea big, engaging, relevant and simple enough to achieve just that very thing. It's not rocket science, but it took a long time for the marketing industry to catch on.

Don't believe me? Check this campaign out from Publicis, a historically traditional advertising agency...

Meet iHobo...the world’s first interactive homeless person. Developed for Depaul, the UK homeless charity, the app was designed to highlight the plight of homeless people to a younger audience. The app became a highly controversial sensation – you effectively adopt a digital homeless tamagotchi who you have to care for whenever he or she demands – day or night. A modern equivalent of walking around with a fake baby, it was up to you whether this person ate food and slept in warmth, or turned to drugs and sold their sleeping bag if you ignored them...ultimately whether they lived or died. The app smashed expectations becoming the UK’s most downloaded free app within five days, generating 20,000 downloads a day and now having been downloaded 500,000 times. It created an iPhone first by circumventing Apple restrictions and delivering in-app donation capabilities, generating seven times more donations than any previous campaign run by the charity.

You can argue this is an ad of sorts if you like. But it couldn't be further from a 30 second spot if it tried. Content-based, socially driven, virally strong, an experiential launch, explosive media coverage and a commercial goldmine...it's a great example of the "new big idea" in our world without walls.

http://p-showcase.com/ihobo/

Want to understand innovation?

Innovation...the latest corporate buzzword. Crutch of the tired 21st Century organisation-under-pressure or founding principle of the visionary? As subjective as it is flimsy, to the ill-formed or cynical it can intimate a spectrum of activity from pointless pontification at one end to profitable production at the other. Creating the latter, and avoiding the former is clearly the key for any innovator...after all, everyone has good ideas but only the best get them to market in winning form.

One strategy to understanding how to create a winning idea is to understand the Theory of Obliquity. A philosophical theory first proffered by leading economist John Kay (http://www.johnkay.com/2004/01/17/obliquity), it shares many traits with the Chaos theory. Not to be confused with the meaning of Obliquity in scientific terms (which indicates the degree of axial tilt) the Theory of Obliquity essentially suggests that the most effective way to achieve one’s aims is through indirect, rather than direct means. Those who race directly toward a functional and singular aim often are the least successful...the companies who seek solely to be the most profitable rarely are; likewise, people who aspire to being the happiest they can be are often, privately, the most unhappy.

As a theory for creative and commercial innovation, it's a good one. Often, the fastest and most sustainable route towards a goal is not to fight directly over your competition, but to step left, circumventing their own direct actions and power ahead towards your goal, with the same ambition but differing solutions to your competition. What you end up with is simple, proprietary, protectable and tough to compete with.

There are endless case studies proving this theory works ranging from achieving corporate stardom right the way through to, more randomly, proving for a US National Parks Fire Prevention team that the best way to control the risk of fire, was not actually to put them all out. If you can free your mind from wanting to grasp hold of logic and force you toward the obvious solution, instead letting your imagination run left and then harder at your target in an innovative way...you'll always be more successful.