Weiden & Kennedy's John Rowan
with
Don Schechter
John Rowan, Group Media Director at Weiden & Kennedy, discusses improvements of carrier and connection as well as the capability for personal customizable experiences when advertising online and via mobile.
Transcript: Weiden & Kennedy's John Rowan
I don t know if there's really some big brands that have them done them well, as much as the emergent of specialty widget providers. When you take a look at something like Facebook, that's really the differentiating factor, the various ways that you can customize it. So I would say that while nobody is necessarily saying one way or another if someone has produced a really great widget as much as Facebook has really taken advantage of the idea of widgets.
I have one, it started with research purposes to get to know what the big deal was about Facebook. It's such a phenomenon and growing so fast, that it can't be ignored. To really see why this is the latest craze online, but as I get further into it, it sort of transitioned from a research project to really using it as a consumer.
I think Second Life had its popularity as far as being an advertising buzzword. Not to take anything away from SL, simply because there are a lot of users that really like it. I think as advertisers we look for the next big thing all the time. I think it hit the advertising critical mass too soon and probably turned the second life landscape into sort of a wasteland with the exception of just advertisers being present there. There were a lot of advertisers and not many consumers going to the places where advertisers were.
The thing that I love most about mobile is that worldwide there are far more mobile devices than there are computers. I don't think that mobile is a passing fad, in fact it can only get bigger and it will get bigger. I think that right now its just a back and forth between the carriers and the connection speeds and that kind of thing. Really the fact that in the US most consumers really use their computer, their PC, their Mac, for their online experiences, whereas you go outside the country. You go to Japan where most people use their phone for something other than making a call, which I think is absolutely fascinating. I think that it s absolutely something that can t be ignored and once that kind of initial acceptance and the user experience reaches a level where it s good and not difficult to find things and it doesn't take a long time, with more of a high speed connection that things will get better.
I think its really up to carriers and connection speeds and up to content publishers as well to make that moblie experience good. When you take a look at the early days of the internet, it was probably fairly similar. Slow connection speeds, it was almost like a learning experience of figuring out where you like to go and also for content providers, figuring out what people wanted. Once everyone figures out what people want, then it will really take off.
I know it s a buzzword, but Web 2.0 as far as being able to customize everything I think is great. With every other media its really that push media of forcing stuff down your throat. With DVRs you can watch TV sort of when you want to but it s still not such a customized experience and online I've got my yahoo page and my facebook page and everything is totally customized to what I want. So I think that you can go online and get everything you want the way that you want it is really exciting.
